Title: Aaron Reid v. State of Indiana

State: indiana

Issuer: Indiana Supreme Court

Document:

ATTORNEY FOR APPELLANT 
 
 
 
 
ATTORNEYS FOR APPELLEE 
John T. Wilson 
Steve Carter 
Anderson, Indiana 
Attorney General of Indiana 
 
 
  
 
George P. Sherman 
 
Deputy Attorney General 
 
Indianapolis, Indiana 
 
 
In the 
Indiana Supreme Court  
_________________________________ 
 
No. 48S04-0711-CR-552 
 
AARON REID, 
Appellant (Defendant Below), 
 
v. 
 
STATE OF INDIANA, 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Appellee (Plaintiff Below). 
_________________________________ 
 
Appeal from the Madison Superior Court, No. 48D03-0601-FA-23 
The Honorable Thomas Newman, Jr., Judge  
_________________________________ 
 
On Petition To Transfer from the Indiana Court of Appeals, No. 48A04-0605-CR-00280 
_________________________________ 
 
 
November 28, 2007 
Shepard, Chief Justice. 
 
Appellant Aaron Reid, convicted of conspiracy to commit murder after collaborating with 
a police informant and an undercover officer, argues that his sentence is inappropriate.  We 
revise his sentence from the fifty-year maximum imposed by the trial court to the thirty-year 
advisory sentence.  
 
 
Facts and Procedural History 
 
Aaron Reid was incarcerated in the Madison County Jail during January 2006 when he 
and inmate Jerry Johnson began discussing Reid’s desire to have his wife and mother-in-law 
killed.  Johnson told Reid that he knew someone, Jay Thompson, who would kill them.     
 
Unbeknownst to Reid, Johnson contacted Detective David Callahan and told him of the 
discussions.  Thereafter, Johnson pretended to make phone calls to Thompson while Reid was 
present, stating where Reid’s wife lived, when she would be home, and the manner in which 
Reid wanted her killed.  Detective Callahan intercepted a letter Reid sent to Thompson and 
arranged a phone call in which Callahan, pretending to be Thompson, spoke with Reid.  During 
the conversation, the officer asked whether Reid wanted his wife killed.  Reid responded by 
saying, “I want everything taken care of,” and “[t]here’s only two (2) people, the mother and a 
daughter and that’s it.”   (Tr. at 257, 267-68.)   
 
On January 7, 2006, Detective Mike Howell, posing as Thompson, met with Reid at the 
jail.  When Howell asked whether Reid wanted them “D-E-A-D,” Reid made a slashing motion 
across his throat.  (Id. at 284-85.)   
 
On January 9, 2006, Callahan met with Reid at the Madison County Sheriff’s 
Department.  During that meeting and a subsequent meeting initiated by Reid, Reid waived his 
Miranda rights, admitted that he had written a letter to and spoken with someone he believed was 
Thompson, told Callahan the plan was a joke, and told Callahan that it was Johnson’s idea.  In a 
third meeting on January 20, 2006, Reid gave a videotaped statement in which he admitted he 
wanted his mother-in-law killed, but claimed he did not want his wife harmed.   
 
The State charged Reid with conspiracy to commit murder, a class A felony.1  At his 
sentencing hearing, both Reid’s wife and mother-in-law acknowledged awareness of Reid’s 
mental disorders and urged the trial court to give Reid the minimum sentence.  (Tr. at 437, 440-
42, 449.)  In its sentencing order, the trial court identified Reid’s criminal history and the fact he 
                                             
 
1 Ind. Code Ann. § 35-41-5-2 (West 2007). 
 
 
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was on probation at the time of the offense as aggravating circumstances.  The court found the 
wife’s and mother-in-law’s statements and the fact Reid was on medication to be mitigating 
circumstances.  It sentenced Reid to the maximum, fifty years executed.   
 
On appeal, Reid argues that his sentence was inappropriate.  The Court of Appeals 
affirmed his sentence.  Reid v. State, 868 N.E.2d 71 (Ind. Ct. App. 2007).  We grant transfer.2 
 
  
Reasonableness of Sentence 
 
Reid contends that the trial court’s imposition of the fifty-year maximum sentence was 
inappropriate under Indiana Appellate Rule 7(B).   
 
Although a trial court may have acted within its lawful discretion in determining a 
sentence, Article VII, Sections 4 and 6 of the Indiana Constitution authorize independent 
appellate review and revision of a sentence through Indiana Appellate Rule 7(B), which provides 
that a court “may revise a sentence authorized by statute if, after due consideration of the trial 
court’s decision, the Court finds that the sentence is inappropriate in light of the nature of the 
offense and the character of the offender.”  Anglemyer v. State, 868 N.E.2d 482, 491 (Ind. 2007).  
The burden is on the defendant to persuade us that his sentence is inappropriate.  Childress v. 
State, 848 N.E.2d 1073 (Ind. 2006).  Reid has met this burden.  We conclude that his sentence is 
inappropriate.     
   
The maximum possible sentences are generally most appropriate for the worst offenders.  
Reid’s offense was a class A felony, for which the sentence range is twenty to fifty years, the 
advisory sentence being thirty.  Ind. Code Ann. § 35-50-2-4 (West 2007).  Here, Reid received 
the maximum, despite the fact that neither of his victims was actually placed in danger and, more 
importantly, despite his victims’ wishes that he not receive any incarceration.  Certainly, if the 
                                             
 
2 Reid also argues there was insufficient evidence to establish that he entered into an agreement to have his wife and 
mother-in-law murdered or to establish that he engaged in an overt act in furtherance of that agreement.  The Court 
of Appeals correctly addressed his contentions about sufficiency of the evidence, and, on those points, we 
summarily affirm.  See Ind. Appellate Rule 58(A).   
 
 
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circumstances had been as Reid perceived them, his victims would have been in danger.  Yet, 
whether Reid actually had the ability to orchestrate such a scheme absent the encouragement of a 
fellow inmate, who had an upcoming sentencing hearing and was working undercover with 
police officers, is open to doubt.   
 
At the time of Reid’s trial, he was twenty-two years old.  He has had mental health 
problems since he was a child and has been on medication all of his life.  (Tr. at 443-44.)  Reid 
has been diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, anxiety disorder, conduct 
disorder, borderline intellectual disorder, bi-polar disorder, and post-traumatic stress disorder, 
according to the pre-sentence investigation report.  (App. at 17-18.)  He was placed in Ball 
Memorial Hospital’s Psychiatric Unit in 2005.  (Id. at 18.)  He has amassed a lengthy criminal 
history, but many of these offenses were either misdemeanors, occurred while he was a juvenile, 
or did not result in any physical injuries.  (Id. at 14-15.)     
 
Inmate Johnson testified that he did not prompt the conversations with Reid or “ask 
[Reid] to kill his wife,” but he admitted to previously “snitching” on three other prison inmates, 
who all coincidentally chose to confide in him.  (Tr. at 220-23.)  Johnson also testified that the 
phone calls, letters, contents of the letters, and “[w]hat was needed” for the killings were his 
ideas, rather than Reid’s.  (Id. at 221.)  Johnson faced a sentencing hearing only a few days after 
Reid’s trial, during which the sentencing was open to the court’s discretion; he had been 
convicted of seven crimes of dishonesty in the previous eight years.  (Id. at 223-24.)   
 
Obviously, many police informants will have dubious backgrounds, and it is hardly 
unknown that opportunistic detainees persuade fellow inmates to agree to crimes that otherwise 
would have gone unexecuted, in hopes of gleaning the prosecutor’s leniency.  Reid’s mental 
health problems may have made him an easy target for such a plan.  Johnson even testified that 
Reid knew Johnson gave information to police detectives, but that Reid nonetheless chose to 
confide in him, providing some insight into Reid’s competence to orchestrate an assassination 
plan of his own volition.  (Id. at 224.)   
 
 
 
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Johnson’s role in the conspiracy hardly exonerates Reid from guilt.  If the facts had really 
been as Reid perceived them, his wife and mother-in-law would have been murdered.  Still, 
considering all the circumstances, we cannot say that Reid is one of the worst offenders 
deserving of the maximum sentence.  Given that no one was injured, both potential victims 
pleaded for leniency, and Reid had a history of mental health problems, it is inappropriate to 
order twenty-two year old Reid to serve fifty years.  The advisory sentence of thirty years is 
more appropriate.   
 
 
Conclusion 
 
We direct the trial court to enter a sentence of thirty years executed time in the Indiana 
Department of Correction.   
 
Dickson, Sullivan, Boehm, and Rucker, JJ., concur.