## Facts

- Larry Brooks worked as a bookkeeper for a property-management company that received tenants’ rent payments on behalf of property owners.
- His duties included tracking receipts, making deposits, balancing checkbooks, and handling general financial matters.
- When rent was paid in cash, the company issued a receipt, placed the cash in a sealed envelope, stored it in a desk drawer, and logged the payment in company records.
- The company president discovered that more than $3,000 was missing from several rental accounts over roughly seven weeks and hired a private investigator.
- During the investigation, Brooks underwent a polygraph examination and provided written statements admitting he took cash from rental accounts.
- The State charged Brooks with eight counts of embezzlement based on multiple missing cash payments and an earlier shortage; a jury convicted him on seven counts (two misdemeanors and five fourth-degree felonies).

## Issues

1. Whether multiple takings should have been treated as a single offense under the single-larceny doctrine rather than charged as multiple embezzlements.
2. Whether the trial court erred by allowing cross-examination of a defense witness about a later, uncharged embezzlement allegation involving Brooks.
3. Whether Brooks’s written confessions were involuntary or otherwise inadmissible and should have been suppressed.
4. Whether the State failed to prove “entrustment,” requiring a directed verdict of acquittal.
5. Whether the trial court erred by refusing Brooks’s requested jury instruction defining “entrustment.”
6. Whether the restitution order exceeded statutory authority.

## Decision

- The New Mexico Court of Appeals affirmed the convictions and sentence.
- The court held the evidence permitted treating the takings as separate and distinct embezzlements rather than a single offense under the single-larceny doctrine.
- The court found no reversible error in permitting impeachment-style cross-examination concerning a later, uncharged allegation.
- The court upheld admission of Brooks’s confessions, concluding the record supported the trial court’s voluntariness determination.
- The court held there was sufficient evidence of entrustment to submit the case to the jury and to deny a directed verdict.
- The court held the jury instructions, viewed as a whole, adequately stated the law, so refusal to give Brooks’s preferred entrustment definition was not error.
- The court upheld the restitution order as authorized by statute.
- On further review, the New Mexico Supreme Court reversed on the single-larceny issue, holding that intent must be submitted to the jury and that three counts constituted a single act as a matter of law; other holdings were left undisturbed.

## Legal Principles

- Multiple takings may be charged separately unless the single-larceny doctrine applies based on a single, continuing intent or plan; where intent is in dispute, the doctrine requires a jury determination with proper instructions.
- “Entrustment” for embezzlement may be shown by evidence of job duties and responsibility for handling, recording, and depositing funds; exclusive control is not required.
- Cross-examination regarding other misconduct may be permitted for impeachment and credibility, subject to trial-court discretion under evidentiary rules.
- A confession is admissible when the trial court’s finding of voluntariness is supported by the record.
- A defendant is not entitled to jury instructions in preferred wording if the instructions as given fairly and accurately state the governing law.
- Restitution is proper when imposed within statutory sentencing authority and supported by the record.

## Conclusion

Brooks’s embezzlement convictions were affirmed on evidentiary rulings, sufficiency of entrustment proof, jury-instruction adequacy, and restitution authority, but the case was later reversed in part because the single-larceny doctrine required a jury instruction on intent and mandated aggregation of certain counts as a single act.


State v. Brooks, 862 P.2d 57 (N.M. Ct. App. 1993), cert. granted, rev’d on other grounds, 877 P.2d 557 (N.M. 1994)