State v. Aragon

── State v. Aragon ── Court: New Mexico Supreme Court Date: May 11, 2026 Category: General The slip opinion is the first version of an opinion released by the Chief Clerk of the Supreme Court. Once an opinion is selected for publication by the Court, it is assigned a vendor-neutral citation by the Chief Clerk for compliance with Rule 23- 112 NMRA, authenticated and formally published. The slip opinion may contain deviations from the formal authenticated opinion. 1 IN THE SUPREME COURT OF THE STATE OF NEW MEXICO 2 Opinion Number: 3 Filing Date: May 11, 2026 4 NO. S-1-SC-40256 5 STATE OF NEW MEXICO, 6 Plaintiff-Appellee, 7 v. 8 CASTULO ARAGON, JR., 9 Defendant-Appellant. 10 APPEAL FROM THE DISTRICT COURT OF CHAVES COUNTY 11 Jared G. Kallunki, District Judge 12 Bennett J. Baur, Chief Public Defender 13 Kimberly M. Chavez Cook, Appellate Defender 14 Mary Barket, Assistant Appellate Defender 15 Santa Fe, NM 16 for Appellant 17 Raúl Torrez, Attorney General 18 Santa Fe, NM 19 Michael J. Thomas, Assistant Solicitor General 20 Albuquerque, NM 21 for Appellee  1 OPINION 2 VIGIL, Justice. 3 {1} Defendant Castulo Aragon, Jr., was convicted by a jury of the first-degree 4 murder of his wife, Maria Aragon (Victim), and three counts of tampering with 5 evidence. Defendant chose to represent himself at the trial. On direct appeal to this 6 Court he now raises approximately twenty various arguments that can be distilled 7 to: (1) issues related to the admission of lay testimony; (2) issues related to the 8 admission of expert testimony and whether Defendant’s right to confront witnesses 9 under the Sixth Amendment was violated; (3) issues related to the sufficiency of the 10 evidence supporting Defendant’s convictions; (4) whether the count three conviction 11 is barred by double jeopardy; and (5) whether prosecutorial misconduct occurred. 12 We conclude that none of Defendant’s arguments warrant a new trial, and we affirm 13 the jury’s verdict on counts one, two and four. However, we remand the case to the 14 district court for dismissal of Defendant’s count three conviction for tampering with 15 evidence because it is barred by double jeopardy. 16 I. BACKGROUND 17 {2} Victim and Defendant met in December, 2015, and married four months later, 18 in April, 2016. Victim and Defendant knew each other for a total of fifteen months 19 when she was murdered in March, 2017, and they were married for eleven of those  1 months. On Monday, March 6, 2017, at approximately 9:40 a.m., Victim was found 2 deceased by the side of the road along Highway 285 north of Roswell, New Mexico. 3 She was lying face down near some large piles of gravel. Her bloody sweater was 4 on backward and her hair was matted with blood. 5 {3} There was no evidence of blood dripping down onto Victim’s clothes, despite 6 significant head trauma. There was no blood on the ground, even though Victim had 7 significant injuries. Nor was there evidence that Victim walked to the location where 8 she was discovered. The evidence suggested that Victim was transported to the 9 scene, was “deposited” where she lay, and was not there long before she was 10 discovered. 11 {4} Expert witness testimony revealed that Victim received three different types 12 of fatal injury. She was strangled, stabbed in the chest, and struck in the head with a 13 blunt object. Victim lived for six to twenty-four hours from the time of the head 14 injuries, which resulted in internal skull fracture and lacerations. The lack of ligature 15 marks suggested manual strangulation, although the evidence was inconclusive. 16 Victim’s jaw was badly broken. A police officer with twenty-four years of 17 experience who was admitted as an expert in crime scene investigation testified that 18 this was “one of the more violent cases that [he had] see