Case Title: Fuller v. State

Citation: 

Docket Number: 48S02-1406-CR-364

State: indiana

Court: Indiana Supreme Court

Date: 2014-06-02T00:00:00Z

Document:
ATTORNEY FOR APPELLANT  
 
 
 
ATTORNEYS FOR APPELLEE  
David W. Stone IV 
 
 
 
 
 
Gregory F. Zoeller 
Stone Law Office and Legal Research 
 
 
 
Attorney General of Indiana 
Anderson, Indiana 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Michael Gene Worden 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Deputy Attorney General 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Indianapolis, Indiana 
 
 
 
______________________________________________________________________________ 
 
In the 
Indiana Supreme Court  
_________________________________ 
 
No. 48S02-1406-CR-364 
 
JACOB FULLER, 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Appellant (Defendant below), 
 
v. 
 
STATE OF INDIANA, 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Appellee (Plaintiff below). 
_________________________________ 
 
Appeal from the Madison Circuit Court, No. 48C01-1103-MR-434 
The Honorable David A. Happe, Judge 
_________________________________ 
 
On Petition To Transfer from the Indiana Court of Appeals, No. 48A02-1210-CR-848 
_________________________________ 
 
 
 
June 2, 2014 
 
 
 
Rucker, Justice. 
Jun 2 2014, 12:55 pm
 
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In a companion case, today we exercised our constitutional authority and revised the 150-
year sentence received by sixteen-year-old Martez Brown for two counts of murder and one 
count of robbery.  Brown v. State, No. 48S02-1406-CR-363, ___ N.E.3d ___ (Ind. 2014).  In this 
case we exercise that same authority to revise the 150-year sentence received by Brown’s cohort, 
fifteen-year-old Jacob Fuller.  
 
Facts and Procedural History 
 
 
Sometime during the late evening hours of Friday, November 26 and the early morning 
hours of Saturday, November 27, 2010, three teenagers—eighteen-year-old Na-Son Smith, 
sixteen-year-old Martez Brown and fifteen-year-old Jacob Fuller—robbed Stephen Streeter and 
his girlfriend Keya Prince in their Anderson home.  Streeter and Prince were shot and killed 
during the robbery, and Fuller and his friends absconded with several thousand dollars in cash, 
several pounds of marijuana, two video game systems, two flat-screen televisions, and a 9mm 
handgun.  The bodies of Streeter and Prince were discovered the following Monday when police 
conducted a welfare check at their home.  
 
At about 2:45 a.m. the next day an officer on patrol saw two youths walking along a 
street in Anderson and stopped them, suspecting a curfew violation.  They were later identified 
as Fuller and Smith.  Around the same time, a resident called 9-1-1 to report seeing a young man 
toss a handgun into a nearby yard as police approached.  Fuller and Smith were arrested, the 
handgun was recovered nearby, and the resident identified Fuller as the person who had 
discarded the handgun.  Subsequently, Fuller’s fingerprints were found on the magazine of the 
handgun, and forensic analysis established the bullet killing Keya Prince was fired from this 
handgun. 
 
A few days later Brown was arrested in connection with the crime and gave police a 
statement—which he subsequently recanted when called as a witness during Fuller’s trial—
implicating himself, Fuller, and Smith in the double killings.  Specifically Brown explained that 
he, Fuller, and Smith had targeted Streeter because they heard he was a drug dealer and kept 
large amounts of cash.  According to Brown, Fuller drove the three of them to Streeter’s house; 
 
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each of the teenagers was armed with a gun; and the trio entered the house, bound Streeter, and 
grabbed Prince.  While Brown was “looking for money and the bud,” Fuller shot Prince once in 
the chest.  State’s Ex. 172 (Tr. of Brown’s Interview at 29).  According to Brown, shortly 
thereafter Smith shot Streeter once in the back of the head.  Brown told police his friends shot 
the victims because they were afraid of being recognized.  During a police interview shortly after 
his arrest, Fuller admitted possessing the handgun, but denied involvement with the shootings.  
 
After the robbery Fuller and his cohorts went on a shopping spree in which they spent the 
proceeds.  They were later identified in a Walmart surveillance video during one of these 
excursions.  And police later recovered photographs retrieved from the cell phones of Smith and 
Fuller taken shortly after the crime depicting the trio displaying a large amount of cash.  State’s 
Ex. 157a.   
 
The State filed a delinquency petition against Fuller in juvenile court and also filed a 
motion requesting the juvenile court to waive jurisdiction.  The juvenile court granted the 
motion.  The State then charged Fuller with two counts of murder, one count of robbery as a 
Class A felony, one count of burglary as a Class A felony, and one count of theft as a Class D 
felony.  After a trial by jury, Fuller was acquitted of burglary, but found guilty of the remaining 
charges.  At the sentencing hearing the trial court reduced the robbery conviction to a Class B 
felony because of double jeopardy concerns and did not enter judgment for theft finding it a 
lesser included offense of the robbery.  After recounting and weighing the aggravating and 
mitigating factors the trial court ultimately sentenced Fuller to the maximum term of sixty-five 
years for each murder and the maximum term of twenty years for the robbery, all to be served 
consecutively, resulting in an aggregate sentence of 150 years—the same sentence imposed on 
Fuller’s cohorts, Brown and Smith.    
 
 
Fuller appealed raising several claims including the appropriateness of his sentence, all of 
which the Court of Appeals rejected.  See Fuller v. State, No. 48A02-1210-CR-848 (Ind. Ct. 
App. July 10, 2013).  We now grant Fuller’s petition to transfer to address his appropriateness 
claim.  In all other respects we summarily affirm the opinion of the Court of Appeals.  See Ind. 
Appellate Rule 58(A)(2).  Additional facts are set forth below. 
 
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Discussion 
 
Juvenile courts generally have exclusive original jurisdiction over children like Fuller 
alleged to be delinquent.  See I.C. § 31-30-1-1(1).  But upon the request of the prosecutor and 
after an investigation and hearing: 
 
[T]he juvenile court shall waive jurisdiction if it finds that: 
(1) the child is charged with an act that would be murder if 
committed by an adult; 
(2) there is probable cause to believe that the child has committed 
the act; and 
(3) the child was at least ten (10) years of age when the act charged 
was allegedly committed; 
unless it would be in the best interests of the child and of the safety 
and welfare of the community for the child to remain within the 
juvenile justice system. 
 
I.C. § 31-30-3-4.  Fuller was thus waived into adult court, exposing him to sentences of forty-
five to sixty-five years for each murder, with the advisory sentence being fifty-five years; and six 
to twenty years for Class B felony robbery, with the advisory sentence being ten years.1  I.C. §§ 
35-50-2-3, -5.  The trial court has further discretion to “determine whether terms of 
imprisonment shall be served concurrently or consecutively . . . [and] may consider” aggravating 
and mitigating circumstances in making such a determination.  I.C. § 35-50-1-2(c).  
 
 
At the sentencing hearing, even while arguing that Fuller should receive a sentence of “a 
minimum of one thirty (130) [years],” Tr. at 786, the State nonetheless presented argument 
acknowledging the significance of Fuller’s young age:   
 
And, you know, the age is quite distressing to me and I, I look at it 
in the sense that there’s an eighteen (18) year old, a sixteen (16) 
year old and a fifteen (15) year old, and my common sense tells 
me, of those three (3), the fifteen (15) year old has to be less 
culpable than the eighteen (18) year old and the eighteen (18) year 
                                                 
1 Subsequent to Fuller’s sentencing, the Indiana Legislature enacted statutes providing courts with greater 
flexibility in choosing sentencing alternatives where juveniles under the age of eighteen are outside the 
jurisdiction of the juvenile court or are waived to adult court.  See Pub. L. No. 104-2013, §§ 1 and 2, 2013 
Ind. Acts 766-71 (codified at Ind. Code §§ 31-30-4-1, -7 (2013) and Ind. Code § 35-50-2-17 (2013)).   
 
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old is probably in the position to control the fifteen (15) and 
sixteen (16) year old a lot better than anyone else in that situation 
and he’s the one that’s probably go[ing] along. . . .   
 
Tr. at 784-85.  In imposing sentence the trial court identified the following aggravating factors: 
(1) Fuller’s history of criminal and delinquent activity; (2) that Fuller conspired with his co-
defendants to commit the offenses; (3) the offenses were committed in the presence of a person 
under the age of eighteen (cohort Brown who was sixteen); and (4) the crimes resulted in 
multiple deaths.  In mitigation, the trial court identified Fuller’s young age.  Concluding that the 
aggravating factors “substantially outweigh[ed]” the sole mitigating factor, Tr. at 790, the trial 
court sentenced Fuller to the maximum sentence possible:  Sixty-five years for Streeter’s murder, 
plus sixty-five years for Prince’s murder, plus twenty years for the robbery, all to be served 
consecutively.   
 
The trial court certainly acted well within its broad discretion in imposing this sentence.  
However, “[e]ven where a trial court has not abused its discretion in sentencing, the Indiana 
Constitution authorizes independent appellate review and revision of a trial court’s sentencing 
decision.”  Pierce v. State, 949 N.E.2d 349, 352 (Ind. 2011) (citing Ind. Const. art. 7, §§ 4, 6; 
Anglemyer v. State, 868 N.E.2d 482, 491 (Ind. 2007), clarified on reh’g by 875 N.E.2d 218).  
We implement this authority through Indiana Appellate Rule 7(B), “which provides that ‘the 
Court may revise a sentence . . . if, after due consideration of the trial court’s decision’” we find 
“‘the sentence is inappropriate in light of the nature of the offense and the character of the 
offender.’”  Anglemyer, 868 N.E.2d at 491 (quoting App. R. 7(B)).  Whereas prior to 2003 our 
authority to revise was confined to cases in which the sentence was “manifestly unreasonable in 
light of the nature of the offense and the character of the offender,” see App. R. 7(B) (2002) 
(emphasis added), the current rule reflects our “modest steps to provide more realistic appeal of 
sentencing issues.”  Serino v. State, 798 N.E.2d 852, 856 (Ind. 2003).  Today’s Rule 7(B) “places 
central focus on the role of the trial judge, while reserving for the appellate court the chance to 
review the matter in a climate more distant from local clamor.”  Id. at 856-57. 
 
In considering the nature of the offense we recognize the advisory sentence is the starting 
point the Legislature selected as appropriate for the crime committed.  See Anglemyer, 868 
 
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N.E.2d at 494.  The trial court ultimately imposes a sentence based on the aggravating and 
mitigating circumstances it finds.  However, in analyzing a claim under Appellate Rule 7(B), we 
are not limited to the mitigators and aggravators found by the trial court.  
 
 
Concerning the nature of the offense, as we observed today in Brown “although senseless 
and reprehensible, the murders in this case were not particularly heinous.”  Brown, No. 48S02-
1406-CR-363, slip op. at 6.  In particular, “there is no evidence that the victims were tortured, 
beaten, or lingered in pain.”  Id.  As for the character of the offender, the most significant factor 
here is Fuller’s young age.  Again, we recount what we had to say on this subject in Brown.  
 
Sentencing 
considerations 
for 
youthful 
offenders—
particularly for juveniles—are not coextensive with those for 
adults.  See Miller v. Alabama, 132 S. Ct. 2455, 2469 (2012) 
(requiring the sentencing judge to “take into account how children 
are different, and how those differences counsel against 
irrevocably sentencing them to a lifetime in prison” (footnote 
omitted)).  Thus, both at initial sentencing and on appellate review 
it is necessary to consider an offender’s youth and its attendant 
characteristics.  
 
In holding death sentences and mandatory life without 
parole sentences for those under the age of eighteen to be 
unconstitutional, the United States Supreme Court has underpinned 
its reasoning with a general recognition that juveniles are less 
culpable than adults and therefore are less deserving of the most 
severe punishments.  See Graham[v. Florida], 560 U.S. [48, 68 
(2010)].  This presumption that juveniles are generally less 
culpable than adults is based on previous and ongoing 
“‘developments in psychology and brain science’” which 
“‘continue to show fundamental differences between juvenile and 
adult minds’” in, for instance, “parts of the brain involved in 
behavior control.”  Miller, 132 S. Ct. at 2464 (quoting Graham, 
560 U.S. at 68).  The Supreme Court has discerned “three 
significant gaps between juveniles and adults.”  Id.  First, “[a]s 
compared to adults, juveniles have a ‘lack of maturity and an 
underdeveloped sense of responsibility.’”  Graham, 560 U.S. at 68 
(quoting Roper v. Simmons, 543 U.S. 551, 569 (2005) (quotation 
omitted)).  Second, “they ‘are more vulnerable or susceptible to 
negative influences and outside pressures, including peer 
pressure,’” id. (quoting Roper, 543 U.S. at 569), and “they have 
limited ‘contro[l] over their own environment’ and lack the ability 
to extricate themselves from horrific, crime-producing settings.”  
 
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Miller, 132 S. Ct. at 2464 (alteration in original) (quoting Roper, 
543 U.S. at 569).  Finally, “a child’s character is not as ‘well 
formed’ as an adult’s . . . and his actions [are] less likely to be 
‘evidence of irretrievabl[e] deprav[ity].’”  Id. (alteration in 
original) (quoting Roper, 543 U.S. at 570).  “These salient 
characteristics mean that ‘[i]t is difficult even for expert 
psychologists to differentiate between the juvenile offender whose 
crime reflects unfortunate yet transient immaturity, and the rare 
juvenile offender whose crime reflects irreparable corruption.’”  
Graham, 560 U.S. at 68 (alteration in original) (quoting Roper, 543 
U.S. at 573).  Even justices not finding categorical Constitutional 
violations in these juvenile cases agree with this precept.  See 
Graham, 560 U.S. at 90 (Roberts, C.J., concurring in the judgment) 
(“Roper’s conclusion that juveniles are typically less culpable than 
adults has pertinence beyond capital cases.”); Roper, 543 U.S. at 
599 (O’Connor, J., dissenting) (“It is beyond cavil that juveniles as 
a class are generally less mature, less responsible, and less fully 
formed than adults, and that these differences bear on juveniles’ 
comparative moral culpability.”). 
 
Consistent with the Supreme Court’s reasoning this Court 
has not been hesitant to reduce maximum sentences for juveniles 
convicted of murder.  In Carter v. State, we reduced to fifty years a 
fourteen-year-old’s maximum sixty-year sentence for the brutal 
murder of a seven-year-old girl, recognizing among other things 
his young age.  711 N.E.2d 835, 836-37 (Ind. 1999).  In the case of 
a sixteen-year-old who brutally beat his adoptive parents to death 
while they slept, we reduced a maximum 120-year sentence to 
eighty years.  Walton v. State, 650 N.E.2d 1134, 1135, 1137 (Ind. 
1995).  And in  Widener v. State, 659 N.E.2d 529, 530 (Ind. 1995), 
the seventeen-year-old defendant and his two eighteen-year-old 
cohorts planned to rob a woman as she made a night deposit after 
work.  In executing the crime, the defendant fired multiple shots at 
the victim, killing her.  In the days after the robbery the 
perpetrators spent the proceeds of their crime at the mall, going to 
the movies and out to eat.  Finding additional mitigating 
circumstances not recognized by the trial court, we concluded the 
defendant’s seventy-year sentence was manifestly unreasonable 
and reduced it to an aggregate term of fifty years.  Id. at 530-31, 
534.   
 
Brown, No. 48S02-1406-CR-363, slip op. at 8-9.  As with defendant Brown, defendant Fuller’s 
150-year sentence likewise “‘forswears altogether the rehabilitative ideal.’”  Miller, 132 S.Ct. at 
2465 (quoting Graham, 560 U.S. at 74)).  And like Brown’s maximum consecutive sentence, 
 
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Fuller’s maximum consecutive sentence also essentially “‘means denial of hope; it means that 
good behavior and character improvement are immaterial; it means that whatever the future 
might hold in store for the mind and spirit of the [juvenile] convict, he will remain in prison for 
the rest of his days.’”  Graham, 560 U.S. 70 (quoting Naovarath v. State, 779 P.2d 944, 944 
(Nev. 1989)).   
  
In the case of sixteen-year-old Brown we employed our collective sense of what was an 
appropriate sentence and determined he “should receive an enhanced sentence of sixty years for 
each count of murder to be served concurrently and an enhanced sentence of twenty years for 
robbery to be served consecutively, for a total aggregate sentence of eighty years imprisonment.”  
Brown, No. 48S02-1406-CR-363, slip op. at 10.  We believe Fuller is entitled to a sentence 
revision as well.  But we are not inclined to revise Fuller’s sentence to be precisely the same, or 
even less than that of his cohort.  Although only a year older than Fuller, Brown unlike Fuller 
was an accomplice—a factor that we found particularly important.  Instead Fuller was one of the 
actual shooters.  We conclude that Fuller should receive the maximum enhanced sentence of 
sixty-five years for each count of murder to be served concurrently, and an enhanced sentence of 
twenty years for robbery to be served consecutively for a total aggregate sentence of eighty-five 
years imprisonment.  
 
Conclusion 
 
 
We affirm Fuller’s convictions and remand this cause to the trial court with instructions 
to issue an amended sentencing order consistent with this opinion. 
 
Dickson, C.J., and David, Massa and Rush, JJ., concur.