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State v. House2/24/1999
{1} Gordon House was convicted of vehicular homicide and various other charges after two hung juries in Taos County and a change of venue to Doña Ana County for the third trial. The Court of Appeals reversed his conviction, holding that the trial court abused its discretion in changing the venue from Taos County to Doña Ana County. The State appealed. We hold that the trial court did not abuse its discretion in concluding that a fair trial could not be guaranteed in Taos County and that Doña Ana County was more likely to be free from exception. We reverse the Court of Appeals and affirm the trial court.
I. FACTS
{2} This case, arising from a fatal traffic accident, was so transformed by publicity that all those involved were compelled to evaluate how the defendant could receive a fair trial. So frenetic was the media attention that the prosecution eventually claimed that even the State was having difficulty receiving a fair adjudication of this case.
{3} On Christmas Day 1992, the citizens of New Mexico awoke to news reports concerning a tragic traffic accident that had occurred the night before. Through the constant media coverage, the details of the accident were widely available. The following facts were adduced from the record of the proceedings in the trial court. The incidental endnotes are intended to illustrate the extent and nature of the media coverage surrounding each event in this case.
{4} On that Christmas eve, Paul Cravens, his wife Melanie, and her three daughters, five-year-old Kaycee, seven-year-old Erin, and nine- year-old Kandyce, set off in their Oldsmobile to enjoy the Christmas Lights in Albuquerque. They drove westward on Interstate Highway 40 toward "Nine Mile Hill" which provided a vantage from which they could see the city's lights.
{5} Gordon House, an enrolled member of the Navajo nation, is married and the father of two young children, and was employed as executive director of House of Hope, a halfway home for troubled adolescents in Gallup, New Mexico. That Christmas Eve, he was driving his Ford pickup from Albuquerque to his home in Thoreau, New Mexico. House admitted that, during that evening, over a period of several hours, he had consumed seven-and-one-half beers. House claimed that, shortly after beginning his journey, he became ill with the precursor symptoms of a migraine headache. He asserted that his migraine symptoms grew so severe that he was partially blinded. He became disoriented and inadvertently entered Interstate Highway 40 going the wrong direction. Thus, at the same time Cravens and his family were driving west in the westbound lane, House was driving east in the same lane.
{6} Several other vehicles were forced to take evasive actions to avoid colliding with House as he drove eastward in the westbound lane of the Interstate. A state policeman paced House from the proper eastbound lane, attempting to get his attention with red lights, a siren, and a spotlight directed at House's truck. At one point House looked at the policeman and accelerated to speeds exceeding 85 miles per hour. House hit the Cravens' car head-on. Melanie Cravens and her three young daughters were killed instantly. Paul Cravens suffered severe injures.
{7} House was seriously injured. The prosecution offered evidence that, shortly after House arrived at a hospital in Albuquerque, his blood-alcohol concentration was measured at .18% and, about five hours later, was measured at .10%. House asserted that a severe familial hemiplegic migraine, rather than alcohol, was the proximate cause of his driving the wrong way on the freeway and the resultant accident. It was later revealed that he had
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