Title: Goodloe v. State

State: indiana

Issuer: Indiana Supreme Court

Document:

248 Ind. 411 (1967)
229 N.E.2d 626
GOODLOE
v.
STATE OF INDIANA.
No. 30, 535.

Supreme Court of Indiana.
Filed September 19, 1967.
*412 Forrest Bowman, Jr., of Indianapolis, for appellant.
Edwin K. Steers, Attorney General, and Edgar S. Husted, Deputy Attorney General, for appellee.
JACKSON, J.
This matter comes to us by way of appeal from a conviction on a charge, by affidavit, of entering to commit a felony. Trial was had to the court without the intervention of a jury, trial by jury having been specifically waived. At the conclusion of the State's evidence, both the State and appellant rested. The court found the appellant guilty as charged at the conclusion of the trial on November 14, 1963, and set December 9, 1963, as the date for sentencing appellant, and on said date pronounced sentence in accordance with his findings.
The statute on which the affidavit herein was based is found in Acts 1941, ch. 148, § 5, p. 447, § 10-704, Burns' 1956 Replacement, and reads as follows:
The affidavit on which appellant was tried reads in pertinent part as follows:
The defendant-appellant entered a plea of not guilty to the charge embraced in the affidavit.
The finding of the court in pertinent part reads as follows:
The court set December 9, 1963, for sentencing and on said date entered judgment and sentence herein as follows:
The appellant-defendant filed his Motion for New Trial within time, basing the same on the following grounds, to-wit:
The court overruled appellant's Motion for New Trial. Thereafter and within time appellant filed his transcript and assignment of errors. The error assigned and relied upon is the single specification,
On the day of trial and before the introduction of any evidence the appellant requested a separation of witnesses. The request was granted, with the exception that the State requested that the witness John Ozols be kept. The witness was permitted to remain over the objection of appellant.
Since the appellant produced no witnesses in his own behalf, the evidence adduced is that of the State of Indiana. The testimony of the State's witnesses, and hence that most favorable to the State, may be summarized as follows:
Stella Elvira Barlow, a bookkeeper for the Indiana Heart Association, testified that on May 9, 1962, she closed up the office of the Heart Association and locked the inside safe and the outside doors of a cabinet next to her desk around 4:30. Another employee Evelyn Ludlow, worked in the office until 5:00. John Ozols, a stock boy for the Association, was in the stockroom at 5:15 preparing mail to be sent out the next day. After completing this work, he took the packages into the main office of the Association and put them on a chair. When he entered the main office, the appellant was sitting in a chair facing one of the doors of the cabinet. The appellant put a *415 handkerchief up to his face. Ozols testified that when he came into the office, one door of the cabinet had been bent. He had been in the office twenty or thirty minutes before that, and at that time the doors were not bent. Ozols laid the packages down and walked out of the office, down the hall and to the stairs heading to the basement where he met a janitor. Ozols then turned around and saw the appellant pull his head back in from a door to a conference room of the Association. A short time later, the appellant came out of the office and met another janitor. The appellant started telling the janitor that he had seen someone enter the office and that he had gone in to investigate what was going on. The appellant claimed the person had run out of the office. The appellant then started down toward the basement, at which time he said he had just seen the person in the basement. Ozols then called the police.
When the police arrived, the appellant gave them a vague description of the man they were looking for and told them that the person had left the building. The police then questioned the other people in the lobby. One of the janitors told them that the appellant was the person they actually wanted. The appellant had then left the building. The police chased him across an open field. The appellant ran into an apartment building and went to the basement where he was apprehended and placed under arrest.
James Coomler, the police officer who apprehended the appellant and assisted in the investigation of the alleged crime, testified that the cabinet had been pried on and that the door had been forced, sprung and turned away from the cabinet. The appellant was searched when he was arrested, but no weapons or burglary instruments were found on him. No evidence was offered to show that anything was actually taken from the cabinet.
After several of the State's witnesses had testified, Mr. Spencer, the Deputy Prosecutor, made the following statement:
After the State had presented all of its witnesses, Mr. Spencer made the following statement:
At this point the defense rested.
Counsel for appellant and the Attorney General display an unusual degree of unanimity on the proposition that in this appeal there is no problem of weighing conflicting evidence. Their paths part on the legal effect of the evidence adduced.
The appellant says the evidence shows that the appellant was found sitting in a chair in the main office room of the Indiana Heart Association, in front of a metal cabinet that had recently been damaged, under circumstances from which it might be inferred that he was attempting to perpetrate the crime of larceny. The evidence failed to establish that the crime of larceny had been committed. The office in question is located in a public building. The evidence shows other offices in the same building, one being the office of the Legal Aid Society directly across the hall on the same floor from the offices of the Indiana Heart Association. There is no evidence showing exactly when the defendant entered the building or the Heart Association office, and there is no evidence *417 from which it can be inferred that he entered at a time other than when the building and offices were open to the general public.
Appellant contends the statute on which the affidavit herein was based, § 10-704, Burns' 1956 Replacement, supra, has been construed by this court, and it is well settled that the felonious intent must exist at the time of the entry if there is to be a conviction.
Appellant contends the above case indicates clearly what the State of Indiana was required to prove in the case at bar.
Appellant also cites an Illinois case as being in point and persuasive.
*418 The State says:
The fact situation in the case at bar distinguishes the cases cited, to the extent that not only are the cited cases not persuasive, they are not at all in point.
The appellee readily admits that there is no direct evidence of the criminal intent of the appellant at the moment he entered the Indiana Heart Association office.
The appellee further argues:
There are also other rules of law applicable in criminal cases. The first of which is that in such cases it is the duty of *419 the State to prove the defendant's guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. Dudley; Chenoweth v. State (1960), 241 Ind. 201, 204, 165 N.E.2d 380; Thomas v. State (1958), 238 Ind. 658, 663, 154 N.E.2d 503; Johnson v. State (1957), 236 Ind. 509, 512, 141 N.E.2d 444.
It is also a fundamental rule of criminal law that all doubts must be resolved in favor of the innocence of the accused. Asher v. State (1929), 201 Ind. 353, 357, 168 N.E. 456; Lindley v. State (1929), 201 Ind. 165, 167, 166 N.E. 661.
The affidavit charging defendant listed eight State witnesses, only three of such witnesses were used. One of the State's witnesses was present in court in response to the subpoena issued by the State. This witness was not used, the State wanting to stipulate his testimony would be the same as that of a witness who had previously testified; appellant's counsel refused to so stipulate saying defendant wanted the witness cross-examined. Thereupon, the State, through the Prosecuting Attorney, made the following statement, "[t]hen you will have to make him your witness, as I do not prefer to call him." Under such circumstances we are of the opinion that the failure of the State to put this witness on the stand is presumptive evidence that his testimony would be adverse to the State. 53 Am. Jur. 531, Trial §§ 693, 695; 8 I.L.E., Criminal Law, § 122, p. 222; Orfield, The Hearsay Rule in Federal Criminal Cases-Part 1, 42 Fordham L. Rev. 499, 521, (1964), and authorities cited therein.
In view of the record before us in this case, the argument made by the State that appellant's flight is clear evidence of his guilt is not persuasive.
We agree with the contention of the appellant that there is a complete failure of evidence in this cause. We do not weigh the evidence or determine the credibility of the witnesses. It is our duty to review the evidence to see if there is evidence of probative value to sustain the *420 burden of the State to prove the guilt of the defendant beyond a reasonable doubt and if so, to affirm the judgment of the trial court. After viewing all of the evidence most favorable to the State, and all the favorable inferences that might reasonably be drawn therefrom, there is missing an essential element of the offense for which the appellant was convicted.
The finding and judgment of the trial court is reversed, and the cause remanded with instructions to grant appellant's motion for a new trial.
Lewis, J., concurs.
Hunter, C.J. and Mote, J., concur in result.
Arterburn, J., dissents.
NOTE.  Reported in 229 N.E.2d 626.