Background
In October 2020, a Tularosa police officer found Carlos Miguel Mendez asleep at the wheel of a truck idling at a stop sign. After detecting the odor of alcohol, observing signs of intoxication, and obtaining breathalyzer readings of .24 and .22 BAC, officers arrested Mendez and charged him with aggravated DWI under NMSA 1978, § 66-8-102(D)(1).
During voir dire, a prospective juror — Juror 6 — made two troubling sets of statements. First, he said he disagreed with fellow venire members who pledged to weigh the evidence as presented, stating that law enforcement “obviously had reason” to charge Mendez and “we would not be here if they didn’t have enough evidence to prove him guilty.” When asked whether he assumed Mendez had done something, Juror 6 said “Yes” — and confirmed that belief “would weigh on him during deliberations.” Second, Juror 6 stated he would give law enforcement testimony more weight than other witnesses because of officers’ training and experience.
Defendant moved to strike Juror 6 for cause, pointing specifically to the second set of statements. The district court denied the motion. Defendant then used a peremptory challenge to remove Juror 6 and subsequently exhausted all remaining peremptory challenges before jury selection was complete. The jury convicted Mendez of aggravated DWI. The Court of Appeals affirmed the conviction, holding that the first set of statements was unpreserved and that the second set alone did not establish bias sufficient to require excusal for cause. Mendez petitioned the Supreme Court for certiorari.
The Court’s Holding
The New Mexico Supreme Court unanimously reversed. On preservation, the Court held that Defendant’s motion to strike Juror 6 — grounded in bias favoring law enforcement — was sufficient to preserve all of Juror 6’s voir dire statements for appellate review, even those not individually cited in the motion. Because the core theory of actual bias in favor of law enforcement was fairly invoked before the district court, the appellate argument was not “materially different” from what was raised below, and the Court of Appeals erred by refusing to consider the first set of statements.
On the merits, the Court held that Juror 6’s statements, viewed in totality, demonstrated actual bias that would have affected his vote. Juror 6 did not merely express a favorable impression of law enforcement; he affirmatively rejected the presumption of innocence, predicted a guilty verdict before any evidence was presented, confirmed that belief would influence deliberations, and stated he would credit officer testimony over other witnesses. Critically, Juror 6 was never asked — and never volunteered — that he could set his assumptions aside and remain impartial. The district court therefore abused its discretion in refusing to excuse him for cause.
On prejudice, the Court reaffirmed and declined to overrule Fuson v. State, 1987-NMSC-034, which presumes prejudice when a defendant is forced to spend a peremptory challenge on a juror who should have been removed for cause and then exhausts all remaining challenges before the venire is complete. The Court rejected the State’s proposed harmless-error analysis based on the strength of the evidence of guilt, reasoning that such an approach fails to address the constitutional wrong — the right to trial by an impartial jury under Article II, Section 14 of the New Mexico Constitution. The Court also declined to overrule Fuson on stare decisis grounds, noting that federal precedent shifting away from automatic reversal addresses only federal constitutional law, while prejudice in the peremptory-challenge context is a matter of state law under Rivera v. Illinois, 556 U.S. 148 (2009).
Key Takeaways
- A defense motion to strike a juror for cause preserves the broader theory of bias for appellate review — trial counsel need not enumerate every supporting statement made during voir dire, so long as the motion fairly alerts the court to the claimed basis for partiality.
- Actual bias is established when a prospective juror’s statements, taken together, show the juror would not apply the presumption of innocence and would not evaluate the evidence impartially — particularly where the juror is never rehabilitated by affirming an ability to remain fair.
- New Mexico’s Fuson rule remains good law: prejudice is presumed when a defendant wastes a peremptory challenge on a juror who should have been struck for cause and exhausts all challenges before the venire is complete, requiring a new trial without any showing of actual harm.
- A harmless-error analysis tied to the weight of the prosecution’s evidence is an improper lens for evaluating structural errors that implicate the right to an impartial jury.
Why It Matters
This decision reinforces that New Mexico’s impartial-jury guarantee under the state constitution provides broader protection than its federal counterpart. By declining to follow the U.S. Supreme Court’s lead in Ross v. Oklahoma and Martinez-Salazar — which allow defendants to cure a biased-juror error through peremptory strikes without constitutional remedy — the Court preserves a defendant’s full complement of peremptory challenges as a meaningful trial right rather than a tool for correcting judicial error.
For practitioners, the case sets a practical standard: a juror who expresses a presumption of guilt, confirms that presumption will affect deliberations, and is never asked whether he can set it aside must be excused for cause. Defense counsel who raise a general bias theory at trial need not catalog each offending statement to keep the full record open on appeal — a clear and meaningful easing of the preservation burden in fast-moving voir dire proceedings.