State v. Tollardo

Summary

The New Mexico Supreme Court held that a plea of guilty or no contest is a 'testimonial statement' under Crawford v. Washington, so the district court's judicial notice that two non-testifying co-defendants (the Romeros) had been convicted of conspiracy to commit second-degree murder violated Steve Tollardo's Sixth Amendment right to confrontation. The Court overruled State v. Moore's three-part harmless error test and held that harmlessness must be assessed case-by-case in light of all circumstances, asking whether there is no reasonable possibility (constitutional error) or no reasonable probability (non-constitutional error) that the error affected the verdict. Applying that standard, the Court found a reasonable possibility that the Romeros' convictions contributed to the jury's verdicts and vacated all of Tollardo's convictions, remanding for a new trial. Justice Bosson concurred in the confrontation and harmless-error analysis but would have affirmed the first-degree murder and kidnapping convictions while reversing only the conspiracy convictions.