Background
On the morning of May 23, 2021, Lee Marco Cuellar killed his wife, Rosalejandra Cisneros-Cuellar, and admitted the killing to police within hours. He told officers his wife had appeared to him as a demon and that he had intended to kill himself afterward. Because the killing itself was not in dispute, the central question at trial was whether Cuellar possessed the deliberate intent required for a first-degree murder conviction under NMSA 1978, Section 30-2-1(A)(1).
The defense retained forensic psychologist Dr. Samuel Roll, whose report concluded that Cuellar suffered from PTSD and hallucinations that significantly impaired his capacity to perceive reality and to form plans or decisions. The State retained its own forensic psychologist, who — after being denied access to examine Cuellar directly — reviewed discovery materials including body-camera footage, police reports, medical records, and detective interviews. The State’s expert was prepared to testify that psychiatric disorders do not necessarily prevent a person from forming deliberate intent.
Before the first trial, Cuellar moved to bar the State’s expert from testifying during the prosecution’s case-in-chief, arguing the testimony was irrelevant until the defense first raised incapacity and was therefore improper anticipatory rebuttal evidence. The district court denied the motion. That trial ended in a mistrial on unrelated grounds. At the second trial, defense counsel did not renew the objection, and the jury found Cuellar guilty of willful and deliberate first-degree murder. He appealed, reasserting the evidentiary arguments from the first trial.
The Court’s Holding
The New Mexico Supreme Court unanimously affirmed the conviction. Noting that no objection was raised at the second trial, the Court could not review the issue for abuse of discretion, but exercised its discretion to conduct plain and fundamental error review given the direct appeal as of right from a life sentence. It found no error at either level.
On relevance, the Court held that the State’s expert testimony was directly relevant to the prosecution’s own case-in-chief. Because the State bore the burden of proving deliberate intent from the outset, and because Cuellar’s own recorded statements to police — including the claim that his wife had turned into a demon — could lead the jury to question his capacity to form intent, expert testimony addressing that capacity was probative from the moment the State began presenting evidence. The Court further noted that even if the testimony were characterized as premature rather than irrelevant, settled New Mexico precedent holds that prematurely admitted evidence that would clearly have been admissible later in the trial does not warrant reversal.
On trial order, the Court rejected Cuellar’s argument that New Mexico’s criminal procedure rules bar anticipatory rebuttal evidence and require strict adherence to the prescribed order of proof. Pointing to Rule 5-607(J) NMRA — which authorizes the court to permit additional evidence at any time before jury submission for good cause — and to over a century of New Mexico precedent, the Court reaffirmed that trial courts possess broad discretion to vary the order of proof in criminal proceedings.
Key Takeaways
- In New Mexico, the State may present expert testimony on a defendant’s capacity to form deliberate intent during its case-in-chief when intent is an element the prosecution must prove — it need not wait for the defense to first raise a mental-capacity theory.
- An objection to the order of evidence raised only in a prior trial that ended in mistrial does not preserve that issue for appeal from a subsequent trial; appellate courts reviewing the second trial must find preservation in the record of that trial.
- New Mexico courts have broad discretion under Rule 5-607(J) and longstanding common-law authority to vary the order of proof in criminal trials; the absence of an explicit “unless otherwise directed” clause in the criminal procedure rules does not strip courts of that flexibility.
- Even if evidence is admitted prematurely rather than being entirely irrelevant, reversal is unwarranted where the evidence plainly would have been admissible at a later stage of the trial.
Why It Matters
This decision clarifies for New Mexico prosecutors that they need not defer mental-health capacity evidence to rebuttal whenever the charged crime requires proof of specific intent. Where the defendant’s own statements or the nature of the offense put capacity at issue from the start, the State may proactively address it in its case-in-chief without running afoul of the rules of evidence or criminal procedure. Defense counsel should be aware that failing to re-raise evidentiary objections at a retrial — even where the same objection was fully litigated in a prior proceeding — will limit appellate review to the more demanding plain and fundamental error standards.
More broadly, the opinion reinforces the substantial deference New Mexico appellate courts afford trial judges in managing the sequence of evidence. While the Court acknowledged that reordering proof could in some circumstances prejudice a defendant, it emphasized that such prejudice must be demonstrated — it will not be assumed merely because the prosecution introduced evidence before the defense opened the door to it.