New Mexico high court upholds man’s 3 murder convictions in 2018 shooting deaths near Dixon

SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) — The New Mexico Supreme Court has upheld a man’s murder convictions in the 2018 shooting deaths of three people near the community of Dixon.

In a unanimous decision, the state’s high court concluded Monday that there was sufficient evidence to support John Powell’s convictions of three counts of first-degree murder and one count of aggravated burglary in 2020.

The bodies of April Browne, 42; Abraham Martinez, 36; and Kierin Guillemin, 27, were found in a Rio Arriba County home a few miles from Dixon.

Authorities said a surveillance camera recorded the killings and theft of a safe and other items from Browne’s home by Powell and his brother, Roger Gage.

Gage was convicted separately in the case and sentenced to life in prison.

Last year, the state Supreme Court affirmed Gage’s convictions of three counts of first-degree willful and deliberate murder.

Authorities said Powell and his brother drove for more than an hour to reach Browne’s house purportedly to get tools and buy drugs.

Chief Justice David K. Thomson wrote in the high court’s nonprecedential decision that “the entire assault, including removing the safe and laptops, lasted only 52 seconds.

“A juror could reasonably determine that the precisely choreographed actions in the video demonstrate the type of careful thought sufficient for deliberation,” Thomson wrote.