NM Supreme Court affirms murder conviction in 2022 Taos gas station stabbing

Editor's note: The New Mexico Supreme Court admonished Cosme Ripol of the 8th Judicial District Attorney's Office for his conduct at trial in this case, but ultimately determined the prosecutor had not made a "fundamental error."

SANTA FE — The New Mexico Supreme Court on Thursday issued a decision affirming a Taos man’s conviction for fatally stabbing another man outside a Taos County gas station in 2022.

At a jury trial in 8th Judicial District Court in Taos in November 2023, Daniel Robert Chavez was convicted of first-degree murder and tampering with evidence for killing Joshua Trujillo, of Taos, with a knife outside the southside Speedway gas station in El Prado on July 23, 2022. Chavez was sentenced to life in prison plus nine years.

The New Mexico Law Offices of the Public Defender in Santa Fe challenged Chavez’s conviction, arguing that the District Attorney’s Office and Judge Jeffrey Shannon, who presided at Chavez’s trial, failed to follow the letter of the law. According to New Mexico law, appeals of life sentences must be heard by the state Supreme Court, but the court last week denied the appeal, finding that prosecutors and the judge acted properly.

In its decision, the Supreme Court found that surveillance video demonstrated Chavez had acted with deliberate and willful intent in stabbing Trujillo, noting that Chavez had resisted his girlfriend’s efforts to stop him as well as “the physical evidence of a prolonged struggle and multiple stab wounds.”

Chavez’s attorneys also alleged that trial prosecutor Cosme Ripol had used inflammatory theatrics and relied excessively upon grisly crime scene photos to agitate Chavez at trial.

The Supreme Court admonished Ripol for referring to Chavez as a “macho man” and "butchering the victim as if he was 'a pig'" during trial, but ultimately concluded that the prosecutor's statements did not amount to a "fundamental error."

“Prosecutor’s rhetoric, while emphatic, colorful and graphic, was factually accurate, was based on the evidence expected at trial, was relevant to the material issues of premeditation, deliberation, and Defendant’s expected claim of self-defense, and was ultimately within the bounds of proper exposition of the evidence,” Thursday’s decision reads.

Kim Chavez Cook, one of the appellate attorneys who filed the appeal, told the Journal in a statement that the court "directly admonished the prosecutor here for unethical behavior, but in light of the evidence and the legal framework the court was bound to use, they decided not to reverse the conviction."

Cook and Thomas J. Lewis, assistant appellate defender, also made the case that the court failed to instruct the jury properly regarding self-defense or defense of another person and erred by denying a motion Chavez’s defense attorney, Robert J. Aragon, filed to dismiss the case based on an officer’s failure to disclose her case notes.

But the Supreme Court dismissed the claims Chavez had acted in defense based upon the absence of a “danger of immediate death or great bodily harm.”

The court noted that the officer’s notes were absent from evidence, and concluded that the defense had failed to demonstrate that they would have been germane to Chavez’s defense at trial.