finding fundamental error upon one or more of the following bases: “there has been a miscarriage of justice;” the question of the defendant’s guilt “is so doubtful that it would shock the conscience” to allow his conviction to stand; or “substantial justice has not been done”
How later courts described this case
- finding fundamental error upon one or more of the following bases: “there has been a miscarriage of justice;” the question of the defendant’s guilt “is so doubtful that it would shock the conscience” to allow his conviction to stand; or “substantial justice has not been done”
- stating that error in failing to instruct jury on essential element of crime for which defendant has been convicted, where there can be no dispute that element was established, does not require reversal of conviction
- determining that where there can be no dispute that the element was established, failure to instruct jury on that element does not offend principles of fundamental fairness and does not require reversal of conviction
- holding that the trial court’s failure to instruct on an essential 2 element of unlawfulness of the act did not constitute fundamental error where the 3 element of unlawfulness is not in dispute
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
RANSOM, Chief Justice (specially concurring).
I concur in the majority’s affirmance of the convictions at issue. Justice Montgomery is without a worthy adversary to deny his continuing attack on the use of the term “jurisdictional error” to describe anything other than a lack of subject matter or personal jurisdiction. He would exclude from “jurisdictional error” any other lack of power, authority, or competence to act. His influence is apparent in the recent opinion authored by me in Govich v. North American Systems, Inc., 112 N.M. 226, 230 , 814 P.2d 94, 98 (1991) (proper to refer to mandatory appellate rules concerning the time for filing notice of appeal as “mandatory” and to discard the term “jurisdictional” that has been used over time by most federal and state courts to describe a mandatory precondition to the exercise of jurisdiction). However, as I stated in a special concurrence to Sundance Mechanical & Utility Corp. v. Atlas, 109 N.M. 683 , 789 P.2d 1250 (1990), “I would not abandon so quickly the principle that a court lacks power to grant relief on a complaint that fails to state a cause of action, and that ‘power or authority’ is a jurisdictional issue that may be raised for the first time on appeal * * 109 N.M. at 692 , 789 P.2d at 1259 (emphasis added).
What is at issue, regardless of terminology, is whether bright-line principles of this Court are to give way to case-by-case analysis based upon principles of justice and conscience. Where this Court has decided as a policy matter to draw certain bright lines to govern the power or authority of the courts, it may be well to describe the crossing of those lines in some terminology other than “jurisdictional error”— but that is the terminology we find in the cases. As a matter of policy, we have adopted a mechanistic approach, but not one that “worships form and ignores substance.”
I agree, however, “when a jury’s finding that a defendant committed an alleged act, under the evidence in the case, necessarily includes or amounts to a [conscious and indisputable] finding on an element omitted from the jury’s instructions, any doubt as to the reliability of the conviction is eliminated and the error cannot be said to be fundamental.” I do not agree that the rule of fundamental error in not instructing on an essential element of a crime applies “only if * * * substantial justice has not been done.” The latter application of the fundamental error doctrine is an unjustified shift from the concept of “jurisdictional error” that has described the fundamental error conclusively presumed to arise from failure to instruct on an essential element that defendant has not affirmatively conceded. See State v. Hargrove, 108 N.M. 233, 235-36 , 771 P.2d 166, 168-69 (1989) (failure to give an instruction on an essential element is jurisdictional and reversible error unless the defendant affirmatively has conceded the facts underlying the essential element). The bright line has served us well and we should go no further here than to add the “necessarily established” exception to the jurisdictional error doctrine (by whatever name) along with the “affirmative concession” exception.