State v. Castillo

535 P.3d 697

STATE of New Mexico, Plaintiff-Appellee,

v.Victor M. CASTILLO, Defendant-Appellant.

No. A-1-CA-40005

Court of Appeals of New Mexico.

Filing Date: June 13, 2023

Raúl Torrez, Attorney General, Santa Fe, NM, Charles J. Gutierrez, Assistant Attorney General, Leland M. Churan, Assistant Attorney General, Albuquerque, NM, for Appellee

Attorney and Counselor at Law, P.A., Eric D. Dixon, Portales, NM, for Appellant

DUFFY, Judge.

{1} Defendant Victor Castillo pleaded guilty to multiple counts of sexual exploitation of a child (both possession and manufacturing) in 2013.¹ Nearly seven years later, Defendant was permitted to withdraw his plea. In the two months before the case was set for trial on the remaining charges, Defendant filed three motions, seeking to (1) dismiss on speedy trial grounds, (2) suppress evidence obtained pursuant to a search warrant, and (3) dismiss for violation of his right to effective assistance of counsel. The district court denied all three motions. Shortly thereafter, Defendant entered into a conditional plea agreement that reserved his right to appeal the district court's denial of his "motion to dismiss and motion to suppress." Detecting no error in the district court's rulings, we affirm.

BACKGROUND

{2} In July 2012, Officer Matthew Broom obtained a search warrant and seized Defendant's cell phone. In his affidavit supporting the search warrant, Officer Broom noted that he had interviewed a sixteen-year-old (identified in the affidavit as Female 1) about an incident that occurred on July 9, 2012, when she, her boyfriend, and another sixteen-year-old (identified in the affidavit as Female 2) went to a party at Defendant's house. According to Female 1, Defendant, who was a former law enforcement officer, had provided alcohol to the minors. During the party, Female 2 and Defendant went into his bedroom. Female 1 and her boyfriend went into a guest bedroom and were having sex when Female 2 entered the room and recorded them using Defendant's cell phone. Female 1 and her boyfriend yelled at Female 2 to leave. On the drive home, Female 2 told Female 1 that Defendant had also used his cell phone to record Female 2 and Defendant having sex. Female 1 told Officer Broom that she believed Female 2 and Defendant had been involved in some kind of relationship for approximately two months before July 9, 2012, but they had not had sex until that evening. Female 1 additionally reported that she had received inappropriate sexual text messages from Defendant later that night. Based on this information, Officer Broom prepared an affidavit for a search warrant for Defendant's home and cell phone.

{3} Upon preliminary inspection of Defendant's cell phone, it appeared pertinent data had been erased. Officer Broom took the phone to the Regional Computer Forensic Laboratory, which located thousands of deleted images, including illicit photographs of both Female 2 and Defendant. Defendant was indicted in September 2012, and in March 2013 he pleaded guilty to ten counts of sexual exploitation of a minor (possession), two counts of sexual exploitation of a child (manufacturing), one count each of criminal sexual contact and criminal sexual penetration of a minor. The district court sentenced Defendant to twenty-five years in prison.

{4} Five years later, in July 2018, Defendant filed a petition for writ of habeas corpus, arguing that his convictions on ten counts of sexual exploitation of a child (possession) and two counts of sexual exploitation of a child (manufacturing) violated double jeopardy. Defendant relied primarily on a case decided the year after he entered his plea, State v. Olsson , 2014-NMSC-012, 324 P.3d 1230. The district court granted Defendant's petition in part and vacated nine of the possession counts. As a remedy, Defendant was allowed to withdraw his plea agreement in August 2020.

{5} The district court set the case for trial in April 2021. Two months before trial, Defendant filed a motion to dismiss on speedy trial grounds, claiming that he had experienced an excessive eight-year delay between September 2012, when he was indicted, and August 2020, when he was permitted to withdraw his plea. Two weeks later, Defendant filed a motion to suppress evidence obtained pursuant to the search warrant, arguing that the warrant was overbroad, the search exceeded the scope of the warrant, and the warrant affidavit did not establish that Female 1 and Female 2 were reliable informants. Finally, one month before trial, Defendant filed a motion to dismiss for ineffective assistance of counsel, arguing that his previous attorney had allowed him to enter into a plea agreement as to multiple counts of sexual exploitation of a child when the rule of lenity allowed for only one charge. Defendant also argued that his counsel failed to file a motion to suppress, did not seek exculpatory evidence, failed to interview witnesses, and did not bring his case to trial in a timely manner.

{6} The district court denied all three motions in separate letter decisions. On Defendant's speedy trial motion, the court concluded that "the time period for analysis of speedy trial rights only applies to that time when a person is ‘accused’ of a crime." The court declined to count the time elapsing from the original plea agreement until Defendant was permitted to withdraw his plea because Defendant "was not accused of a crime [during that period], he was convicted of a crime and serving a sentence." The district court went on to balance the other speedy trial factors and found that Defendant's right had not been violated.

{7} As for the motion to suppress, the district court found that the search warrant was not overly broad because the warrant affidavit contained specific information that provided the "basis and parameter of the search of the phone for the photographs, videos, text messages, etc. that are related to the alleged criminal activity described by the witnesses/alleged victim." The district court further found that the search of the phone had not exceeded the scope of the warrant, noting that "no specific items were identified as being outside the scope of the warrant." The district court also stated that the informants "were sufficiently reliable such that a judge could find probable cause contained in the affidavit."

{8} Finally, the district court concluded that defense counsel's representation of Defendant did not rise to the level of ineffective assistance of counsel and denied Defendant's motion to dismiss on that basis. The court further observed that even if Defendant were successful on his ineffective assistance claim, the remedy would be to allow Defendant to withdraw his guilty plea—the same relief Defendant had already received via his successful habeas corpus petition.

{9} Three weeks after the district court entered its decisions on Defendant's motions, Defendant entered a conditional plea agreement whereby he pleaded guilty to one count of contributing to the delinquency of a minor, one count of sexual exploitation of children (manufacturing), and one count of tampering with evidence. The plea agreement specifically reserved Defendant's right to appeal the district court's denial of his motions. Thereafter, the district court sentenced Defendant to a total of seven-and-one-half years’ imprisonment. Defendant received over nine years’ credit for time he had already served, resulting in his immediate release from custody.

DISCUSSION

I. Speedy Trial

{10} Defendant claims the district court erred in denying his motion to dismiss for violation of his right to a speedy trial. We review this issue in light of the four-factor balancing test articulated in Barker v. Wingo , 407 U.S. 514, 530, 92 S.Ct. 2182, 33 L.Ed.2d 101 (1972), under which courts consider: (1) the length of the delay, (2) the reason for the delay, (3) the defendant's assertion of the right, and (4) prejudice to the defendant. When reviewing a district court's ruling on a motion to dismiss due to a speedy trial violation, we defer to the district court's factual findings but review the court's application of the Barker factors de novo. State v. Spearman , 2012-NMSC-023, ¶ 19, 283 P.3d 272.

A. The Length of the Delay

{11} We first assess the length of the delay to determine whether the delay is presumptively prejudicial. See id. ¶ 20 (noting that "the length of delay acts as a triggering mechanism requiring further inquiry into the Barker factors once the delay has reached a specified amount of time, depending on the difficulty of the case" (internal quotation marks and citation omitted)). The district court determined that this was a complex case, and therefore, a delay of eighteen months is presumptively prejudicial. See State v. Garza , 2009-NMSC-038, ¶¶ 2, 49, 146 N.M. 499, 212 P.3d 387. While Defendant asserts that we should treat this as a case of intermediate complexity with a threshold length of delay of fifteen months, we are deferential to the district court's finding of complexity, which was supported by the nature of the issues, the ages of the witnesses, and the passage of the time. See State v. Ochoa , 2017-NMSC-031, ¶ 15, 406 P.3d 505.

{12} Turning to the length of the delay, the district court concluded the delay exceeded the eighteen-month threshold based on (1) the seven-and-a-half-month period from September 5, 2012, the date Defendant was charged, through April 22, 2013, the date of his initial guilty plea, and (2) the thirteen-month period in which the case was pending after Defendant was permitted to withdraw his plea on August 24, 2020. Defendant argues that the length of the delay should include the seven-plus years he spent incarcerated after he pleaded guilty in 2013. The district court rejected this argument, concluding that the Sixth Amendment speedy trial guarantee "protects the accused from the arrest or indictment through trial but does not apply once a defendant has been found guilty at trial or has pleaded...