N.M. Supreme Court orders new trial for man convicted of murder two decades ago

From News-Bulletin reports

The New Mexico Supreme Court recently ordered a new trial for a Valencia County man convicted of murder for a shooting during a 2001 Thanksgiving Day altercation.

In a unanimous opinion, the court vacated the first-degree murder conviction of Mario Rudolfo, 38, and ordered the case back to the district court in Valencia County for a new trial on the murder charge.

Rudolfo, who was 16 at the time of the fatal shooting, was serving a life sentence for the murder, requiring a minimum of 30 years before becoming eligible for parole. He was also serving 9 1/2 years for convictions on other charges related to the shooting.

The justices concluded Rudolfo’s murder conviction must be set aside because the legal foundation for it was unclear from the jury’s verdict and that one possible basis for the conviction was no longer valid.

In 2004, a jury returned a general verdict against Rudolfo that didn’t indicate whether his first-degree murder conviction was willful and deliberate murder or based on the theory of felony murder, which is a killing that occurred during the commission of a felony or attempt to commit a felony.

The justices concluded that a previous ruling by the court established a “new substantive rule” that applied retroactively to Rudolfo’s case.

The prior opinion — in a case known as State v. Marquez — was issued 12 years after Rudolfo’s trial and narrowed the crimes that can support a charge of felony murder.

The state’s highest court held in the 2016 case that the crime of shooting at or from a motor vehicle could not serve as the underlying felony for purposes of a felony murder charge.

“In the present case (Rudolfo), by applying Marquez retroactively, we have invalidated the theory of felony murder predicated on shooting at or from a motor vehicle,” the court wrote in an opinion by Justice Michael E. Vigil. “Because the parties provided the jury with a general verdict, we cannot conclusively determine whether the jury relied on an invalid theory of felony murder when convicting (Rudolfo) of first-degree murder. In other words, it is impossible for us to determine which theory of first-degree murder the jury selected.”

In 2001, Rudolfo and his brother, Jacob Gonzales, were involved in an altercation with family members of Gonzales’ girlfriend at a mobile home where the brothers lived with the woman.

After a fight inside the home, Rudolfo and his brother ran outside and fired shots as the family members left in a van. Pamela Martinez died and two others were wounded.

Rudolfo was convicted of first-degree murder, attempted murder, shooting at or from a motor vehicle and tampering with evidence.

In an appeal after the trial, the state Supreme Court in 2008 vacated the conviction of shooting at or from a motor vehicle on double jeopardy grounds but affirmed the other convictions.

While in prison, Rudolfo brought several post-conviction challenges in district court. Two years after the court’s ruling in the Marquez case, Rudolfo filed a petition for writ of habeas corpus arguing that the new legal rule about felony murder should apply in his case.

He contended his first-degree murder conviction should be converted to second-degree murder, based on a presumption that the jury convicted him under a felony murder theory.

The district court denied his petition at that time, concluding the rule established in the 2016 opinion was procedural in nature and did not apply retroactively.

This year, the Supreme Court reversed the district court’s decision, but ordered a new trial on the first-degree murder charge. The justices left in place Rudolfo’s other convictions.