Background
In the early morning hours of August 10, 2022, fifteen-year-old Judah Elijah Trujillo met sixty-year-old Samuel Cordero at Ragle Park in Santa Fe through the dating app Grindr, arranged for oral sex. Before going, Judah took a loaded Smith & Wesson from his mother’s boyfriend’s garage — the first time he had access to a gun, though he testified he always armed himself for such meetups. At the park, Samuel suggested moving to a darker, more secluded area; Judah refused, fearing sexual assault. According to Judah, Samuel then grabbed his arm twice, punched him, and Judah — stumbling and feeling he was acting on instinct — fired once over his shoulder, striking Samuel in the back of the head and killing him. Judah then took Samuel’s phone and discarded it out a car window.
A Santa Fe County jury convicted Judah of willful and deliberate first-degree murder and tampering with evidence. On appeal, Judah argued the State’s evidence was insufficient to prove deliberate intent, and that the trial court erred by giving the jury a motive instruction despite a uniform jury instruction use note expressly prohibiting it.
The State’s case rested on more than eighty exhibits and twenty witnesses, but the bulk of this evidence established only that Judah was the shooter. On the question of deliberate intent specifically, the State pointed to Judah’s pre-meetup preparation of the gun, the absence of Judah’s DNA on the victim (suggesting no struggle), the single gunshot to the back of the head, Judah’s failure to flee when Samuel became aggressive, and post-shooting consciousness-of-guilt evidence such as disposing of the phone and telling a friend he had “done something bad.”
The Court’s Holding
The New Mexico Supreme Court held that the State failed to present sufficient evidence that Judah acted with deliberate intent, the element distinguishing first-degree murder from second-degree murder. The Court emphasized that deliberate intent requires evidence that the defendant actually weighed and considered the decision to kill — not merely that he had an opportunity to do so. Because the State offered no evidence of when or why Judah formed an intent to kill, the jury was left to speculate between two unprovable scenarios: that he planned the killing from the outset, or that he formed deliberate intent at some unidentified moment during the encounter. Neither scenario was supported by evidence in the record.
The Court methodically rejected each piece of evidence the State proffered. Judah’s failure to flee was held insufficient because opportunity to deliberate is not evidence of actual deliberation. Consciousness-of-guilt evidence — disposing of the phone, the scared call to a friend, appearing calm on security footage — was found not probative of deliberate intent absent additional evidence of deliberation, and the Court took the opportunity to clarify that a statement in State v. Flores, 2010-NMSC-002, had been misconstrued as creating a per se link between consciousness of guilt and deliberate intent. The Court also declined to hold that bringing a firearm to an encounter alone supports an inference of deliberate intent without corroborating evidence of actual deliberation. And the single gunshot to the back of Samuel’s head, while consistent with an intentional killing, did not by itself distinguish deliberate murder from a rash, impulsive one.
Rather than ordering a new trial, the Court remanded directly for entry of a second-degree murder conviction, concluding that the jury had necessarily found all elements of second-degree murder beyond a reasonable doubt in the course of convicting on the greater charge. As to the motive instruction, the Court agreed the trial court erred by giving it in violation of the use note to UJI 14-5029 — reaffirming that use notes are binding on district courts — but found no fundamental error because Judah failed to show the instruction shocked the conscience or caused fundamental unfairness, and because the reduction of the conviction ameliorated any potential prejudice.
Key Takeaways
- Bringing a loaded firearm to an encounter, standing alone, does not support an inference of deliberate intent to kill under New Mexico law; such evidence must be accompanied by additional corroborating facts showing actual deliberation.
- Consciousness-of-guilt evidence (flight, evidence disposal, post-crime demeanor) is admissible but is not itself probative of deliberate intent absent specific facts tying it to the defendant’s pre-killing mental state — the Court clarified that Flores did not establish a per se rule to the contrary.
- A “freeze” response to a perceived assault cannot, on its own, support an inference of deliberate intent; the Court noted that such involuntary reactions are well-documented responses to traumatic events.
- When a jury has been instructed on and necessarily found all elements of a lesser included offense in convicting on the greater, the Supreme Court may remand directly for entry of the lesser conviction rather than ordering retrial.
- Use notes accompanying New Mexico Uniform Jury Instructions are binding on district courts; a violation constitutes error, though reversal requires a showing of fundamental unfairness.
Why It Matters
This decision provides important clarification for prosecutors and defense counsel in New Mexico homicide cases on what evidence is — and is not — sufficient to take a first-degree murder charge to the jury. The Court’s careful disaggregation of consciousness-of-guilt evidence from deliberate-intent evidence corrects a line of cases that had loosely conflated the two following Flores, and sets a clear standard: the State must point to evidence of what the defendant was actually thinking before or during the killing, not merely to circumstantial facts consistent with both deliberate and impulsive intent.
The opinion also carries significance for cases involving adolescent defendants and victims of assault. The Court’s refusal to treat a freeze response as evidence of deliberation — explicitly citing trauma research — signals judicial awareness of how survival psychology can be misread as calculated conduct. Defense attorneys in cases involving young defendants or alleged self-defense scenarios will likely cite this decision when challenging the sufficiency of deliberate-intent evidence.