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State v. Dominguez1/27/2005
rea required for second degree murder: objective knowledge that the defendant's acts create a strong probability of death or great bodily harm. NMSA 1978, § 30-2-1(B) (1994) (defining second degree murder); State v. Brown, 1996-NMSC-073, 16-17, 122 N.M. 724, 931 P.2d 69 (stating that objective knowledge, rather than subjective knowledge, is required for second degree murder); UJI 14-220 (listing the elements for voluntary manslaughter). By contrast, shooting at or from a motor vehicle requires a reckless disregard, Section 30-3-8(B), which is defined as knowledge that the defendant's "conduct created a substantial and foreseeable risk, that [the defendant] disregarded that risk and that [the defendant] was wholly indifferent to the consequences of conduct and to the welfare and safety of others." UJI 14-1704 NMRA 2005, incorporated by reference in UJI 14-344 use note 3. The mens rea for shooting at or from a motor vehicle, although requiring knowledge of a substantial risk and indifference to the safety of others, does not require knowledge of a strong probability of death or great bodily harm. Thus, as the Court of Appeals recently held in affirming separate convictions for second degree murder and shooting at or from a motor vehicle, the mens rea element for voluntary manslaughter is distinct from the elements of shooting at or from a motor vehicle. State v. Mireles, 2004-NMCA-100, 29, 98 P.3d 727, cert. denied, 2004-NMCERT-008; cf. Varela, 1999-NMSC-045, 16-18 (concluding, based on differing mens rea requirements, that the crime of shooting at a dwelling is not a lesser included offense of second degree murder for purposes of satisfying the strict elements test required for felonies to serve as a predicate for felony murder). Because voluntary manslaughter contains two elements that are not required for shooting at or from a motor vehicle and Section 30-3-8 requires the element of discharging a firearm at or from a motor vehicle, which is not required for voluntary manslaughter, we conclude that voluntary manslaughter and shooting at or from a motor vehicle resulting in great bodily harm have distinct elements under a Blockburger test, and there is a presumption that the Legislature intended to punish these crimes separately.
As we concluded in Gonzales, other indicia of legislative intent support the presumption of permissible multiple punishments. Most notably, the voluntary manslaughter statute and the shooting at or from a motor vehicle statute serve different legislative purposes and protect against different social evils. See Gonzales, 113 N.M. at 225, 824 P.2d at 1027 (describing the different purposes served by the murder statute and the shooting at a motor vehicle statute). Also, "while the statutes in question here may be violated together, they are not necessarily violated together." Id.; see State v. Sosa, 1997- NMSC-032, 36, 123 N.M. 564, 943 P.2d 1017 ("The fact that each statute may be violated independent of the other will also lend support to the imposition of sentences for each offense.").
Despite these persuasive indicia of legislative intent, Defendant contends that the presumption of multiple punishments is rebutted by our prior statement that "one death should result in only one homicide conviction." State v. Santillanes, 2001-NMSC-018, 5, 130 N.M. 464, 27 P.3d 456 (quotation marks and quoted authority omitted). We disagree. We applied this principle in Santillanes because, for the applicable alternatives of the statutes at issue, vehicular homicide and child abuse resulting in death, it was "the death of another that the Legislature intended to punish, not the manner in which it was accomplished." Id. (quotation marks and quoted authority omitted); accord St
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