State v. Coffin10/6/1999
trial court the opportunity to remedy any potential error. By his failure to do so, we conclude that Coffin did not preserve this argument for appeal, and we limit our review to fundamental error. See Rule 12-216 NMRA 1999; Madrid v. Roybal, 112 N.M. 354, 356, 815 P.2d 650, 652 (Ct. App. 1991) ("The principal purpose of the rule requiring a party to preserve error in the trial court is to alert the mind of the trial Judge to the claimed error and to accord the trial court an opportunity to correct the matter."). "The rule of fundamental error applies only if there has been a miscarriage of Justice, if the question of guilt is so doubtful that it would shock the conscience to permit the conviction to stand, or if substantial Justice has not been done." State v. Orosco, 113 N.M. 780, 784, 833 P.2d 1146, 1150 (1992).
{24} Coffin does not claim that UJI 14-201 inadequately explains the proper mens rea for first degree willful, deliberate, and premeditated murder. Instead, he asserts that the trial court's response confused the jury by making it appear that premeditation is not an element of the crime. Based on precedent from this Court and our interpretation of legislative intent, we disagree.
{25} The history of first degree murder in New Mexico clearly demonstrates that the concept of premeditation is subsumed within the meaning of "deliberate intention." In State v. Smith, 26 N.M. 482, 487- 94, 194 P. 869, 870-73 (1921), this Court interpreted a statutory scheme defining murder as "the unlawful killing of a human being, with malice aforethought, either express or implied," 1891 N.M. Laws ch. 80, § 1, defining express malice as "that deliberate intention, unlawfully to take away the life of a fellow creature which is manifested by external circumstances capable of proof," 1891 N.M. Laws ch. 80, § 2, defining first degree murder as " ll murder which shall be perpetrated by means of poison or lying in wait, torture, or by any kind of wilful, deliberate and premeditated killing, . . . or perpetrated from a deliberate and premeditated design unlawfully and maliciously to effect the death of any human being," 1907 N.M. Laws ch. 36, § 1, and defining second degree murder as any murder not constituting first degree murder, id. We held, in accordance with the statute, that the Legislature intended that both first degree murder and second degree murder require malice aforethought. Smith, 26 N.M. at 491, 194 P. at 872. We also determined that "aforethought" is "an exact synonym for `premeditation.'" Smith, 26 N.M. at 491, 194 P. at 872. With respect to "deliberate intention," however, even though the Legislature had used the phrase in the definition of express malice for murder in general, we concluded that the Legislature intended to set apart the type of "intensified or first degree malice" signaled by a "deliberate intent to take away the life of a fellow creature." Smith, 26 N.M. at 491, 194 P. at 872. Thus, although first degree murder and second degree murder shared the element of premeditated malice, we concluded that the Legislature intended to distinguish first degree murder from second degree murder by the element of a deliberate intent to kill, defined as "a thinking over with calm and reflecting mind to do the fatal act." Smith, 26 N.M. at 491, 194 P. at 872 ("In all cases of murder then we have premeditated malice. The statute defining express malice adds to premeditated malice an additional mental state, viz. deliberation; that is to say, there is not only premeditated malice present, but it is accompanied by a deliberation-that is, a thinking over with calm and reflective mind-to do the fatal act."). Because "` remeditation' means nothing more nor less than thought of beforehand," Smith, 26
Page 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 New Mexico DUI Attorneys
DUI Lawyers
|