OPINION
Defendant, convicted of first degree murder and sentenced to life imprisonment, raises two issues on apрeal: (1) Whether the trial court’s denial of a continuance was an abuse of discretion; and (2) Whether thе confession given by defendant to a Jackson, Mississippi, police officer should have been suppressed. We affirm.
1. Defendant was arraigned on September 14,1982, at which proceeding he announced that he would represent himself with assistance from the public defender. Trial was set for December 13th. At a cоntinuance motion hearing on December 7th, a conflict appeared and the trial court direсted appointment of new counsel. In January another continuance was requested, and the trial date was set for February 7, 1983.
Defendant contends that the State’s extended witness list, many whose addresses or telеphone numbers were not shown on the list, made it impossible for defendant to find and interview all of the anticiрated witnesses in the time between appointment of counsel and date of trial. Additionally, the name оf the Crimestoppers informant was not known, and defendant argues that because he was unable to track down the informant, he was denied the opportunity to impeach the State’s principal witness, Bill Sherman, who was named by the Crimestoppers informant as the murderer.
Defendant also claims that the time constraint рrevented him from discovering information contained in FBI reports and documents of the federal witness prоtection program until after the verdict was returned. All of those incidents contributed, says defendant, to a dеnial of his right to adequately prepare his defense, in contravention of the Sixth Amendment and of N.M.Const. art. II, § 14.
Thе State’s witnesses for whom addresses and telephone numbers were not provided were not called to testify. Defendant asserts that their mere listing “establishes their involvement in some aspect of the case” and, therefore, information from any of them “could” have benefited his defense. But, as in State v. Perez,
With regard to the information sought from federal records, it appears that defendant in January, 1983, requested some material through the Freedom оf Information Act that was not forthcoming. On February 2, 1983, at defendant’s request, the trial court signed an order directing the U.S. Marshal to produce certain files for inspection on. February 7th. On February 8th, the U.S. Attorney appeаred in court and advised that defendant’s subpoenaes did not comply with federal regulations. Two days after the verdict was received, and following compliance with the federal requirements, the requested documents were delivered to the court. The FBI records were made available to counsel but werе not included in the record on appeal; the others were sealed by the court.
The above summary discloses the lack of due diligence exercised by defendant in attempting to obtain the federal rеcords. See Perez. Whether defendant was prejudiced by his inability to review the sealed federal doсuments before the trial ended is a matter of pure speculation but, in any event, it was failure to follow proper procedure that delayed their delivery. We note, also, that denial of his motion for a new trial, at which hearing the FBI records were cited, is not appealed. We can therefore assume that the FBI documents presented at that hearing were insufficient to persuade the trial court that they сontained newly discovered material evidence or that their absence caused unfairness in the first trial.
The grant or denial of a motion for continuance based on absence of evidence rests in thе sound discretion of the trial court. State v. Brewster,
2. Defendant's attack on the admissibility of his confession to Mississippi authorities is grounded in his claim that he would have doné or said anything to obtain cocaine аnd that he had been promised a supply of the drug if he would confess. His version of the confession circumstances differed in that respeét from other evidence received by the trial court. The Mississippi officer testified that defendant had been read his rights; that he told the officers that he knew his rights better than they did; that he refusеd to sign a waiver but, nevertheless, he did confess to commission of several crimes, including the one he was triеd for. The court believed the officer’s version, thus resolving the conflict in the evidence against defendаnt after a full hearing on its voluntariness. State v. Armstrong,
The defendant’s conviction is AFFIRMED.