Pursuant to Ind.Appellate Rule 65(D), 

this Memorandum Decision shall not be 

regarded as precedent or cited before 

any court except for the purpose of 

establishing the defense of res judicata, 

collateral estoppel, or the law of the case.

ATTORNEY FOR APPELLANT: ATTORNEYS FOR APPELLEE:

THOMAS W. VANES GREGORY F. ZOELLER

Office of the Public Defender Attorney General of Indiana

Crown Point, Indiana

RICHARD C. WEBSTER

Deputy Attorney General

Indianapolis, Indiana

IN THE

COURT OF APPEALS OF INDIANA

THOMAS E. STEVENS, )

)

Appellant-Defendant, )

)

vs. ) No. 45A05-1301-CR-6

)

STATE OF INDIANA, )

)

Appellee-Plaintiff. )

APPEAL FROM THE LAKE SUPERIOR COURT

The Honorable Clarence D. Murray, Judge

Cause No. 45G02-1206-FB-49

August 13, 2013

MEMORANDUM DECISION – NOT FOR PUBLICATION

BARNES, Judge
2

Case Summary

Thomas Stevens appeals his five-year sentence for Class C felony battery resulting in 

serious bodily injury. We affirm.

Issue

The sole issue before us is whether Stevens’s five-year sentence is inappropriate.

Facts

On May 31, 2012, fifty-two-year-old Stevens attacked his eighty-year-old father, John 

Stevens, with a heavy wooden tray while John was watching television. The attack occurred 

in John’s home in Hammond; Stevens had lived with and been dependent on John most of his 

life. Although John begged Stevens to stop, he continued to strike John about the head and 

body until John lost consciousness. Stevens, apparently intoxicated, then went to another 

room and fell asleep. After John regained consciousness, he called 911 and was taken to the 

hospital. As a result of the attack, John suffered bleeding on the brain, lacerations and 

contusions to his head, a laceration on his arm, a swollen ear, and broken ribs.

The State charged Stevens with Class B felony aggravated battery and two counts of 

Class C felony battery resulting in serious bodily injury. Stevens agreed to plead guilty to 

one count of Class C felony battery resulting in serious bodily injury, and the State dismissed 

the other two counts. On December 4, 2012, the trial court sentenced Stevens to a term of 

five years executed. Stevens now appeals.

Analysis

Stevens’s sole claim is that his sentence is inappropriate under Indiana Appellate Rule 
3

7(B) in light of his character and the nature of the offense. See Anglemyer v. State, 868 

N.E.2d 482, 491 (Ind. 2007). He requests that we reduce his sentence to four years, the 

advisory for a Class C felony. See Ind. Code § 35-50-2-6(a). Although Rule 7(B) does not 

require us to be “extremely” deferential to a trial court’s sentencing decision, we still must 

give due consideration to that decision. Rutherford v. State, 866 N.E.2d 867, 873 (Ind. Ct. 

App. 2007). We also understand and recognize the unique perspective a trial court brings to 

its sentencing decisions. Id. “Additionally, a defendant bears the burden of persuading the 

appellate court that his or her sentence is inappropriate.” Id.

The principal role of Rule 7(B) review “should be to attempt to leaven the outliers, 

and identify some guiding principles for trial courts and those charged with improvement of 

the sentencing statutes, but not to achieve a perceived ‘correct’ result in each case.” 

Cardwell v. State, 895 N.E.2d 1219, 1225 (Ind. 2008). We “should focus on the forest—the 

aggregate sentence—rather than the trees—consecutive or concurrent, number of counts, or 

length of the sentence on any individual count.” Id. Whether a sentence is inappropriate 

ultimately turns on the culpability of the defendant, the severity of the crime, the damage 

done to others, and myriad other factors that come to light in a given case. Id. at 1224. 

When reviewing the appropriateness of a sentence under Rule 7(B), we may consider all 

aspects of the penal consequences imposed by the trial court in sentencing the defendant, 

including whether a portion of the sentence was suspended. Davidson v. State, 926 N.E.2d 

1023, 1025 (Ind. 2010).

Regarding the nature of the offense, this crime was especially heinous. Stevens was 
4

living with John, his elderly father, who had supported Stevens for most of his life, despite 

the lack of any disability on Stevens’s part. Without any indication of provocation, Stevens 

brutally attacked John, refusing to stop despite John’s pleas for mercy, until John lost 

consciousness. Stevens did not seek any assistance for his battered father, who fortunately 

regained consciousness and was able to call 911 and seek medical treatment. John’s injuries 

were multiple and severe, especially for an elderly man.

Turning to Stevens’s character, he first directs us to his guilty plea. Although guilty 

pleas generally reflect favorably upon a defendant’s character, their mitigating weight when 

considering the propriety of a sentence may be reduced “where the defendant receives 

substantial benefit from the plea or where evidence against the defendant is so strong that the 

decision to plead guilty is merely pragmatic.” Amalfitano v. State, 956 N.E.2d 208, 212 (Ind. 

Ct. App. 2011), trans. denied. Here, the State agreed not to pursue a conviction against 

Stevens for Class B felony aggravated battery in exchange for his guilty plea. We previously 

have noted the significant overlap between the type of proof need to convict someone of 

Class B felony aggravated battery and Class C felony battery resulting in serious bodily 

injury. See Mann v. State, 895 N.E.2d 119, 123-24 (Ind. Ct. App. 2008). Also, the evidence 

against Stevens appears to have been strong and undisputed. Stevens received a significant 

benefit from the plea when the State agreed not to attempt to convict him of Class B felony 

aggravated battery, the minimum sentence for which is one year more than the five-year 

sentence he received. See I.C. § 35-50-2-5.

Stevens also notes that he has no prior criminal convictions. It is true that a complete 
5

lack of criminal history may be significantly mitigating, especially when a person obtains his 

or her first conviction relatively late in life, as Stevens did. See Cloum v. State, 779 N.E.2d 

84, 91 (Ind. Ct. App. 2002). However, in a victim impact letter John wrote to the court, he 

described an incident from the 1980s in which Stevens stabbed him in the stomach, requiring 

surgery and hospitalization. In his statement to the probation officer preparing the 

presentence report, Stevens apparently acknowledged this “battery incident” and that it 

resulted in psychological and alcohol abuse treatment for Stevens. App. p. 41. Although that 

incident did occur approximately thirty years ago, and it apparently did not result in any 

criminal charges being filed, it is troubling that the current incident is not the first in which 

Stevens violently attacked his father.

Stevens attempts to downplay this attack because it was described by his father in a 

victim impact statement. He cites Cloum, where we stated:

when a victim impact statement strays from the effect that a 

crime had upon the victim and others and begins delving into 

substantive, unsworn, and otherwise unsupported allegations of 

other misconduct or poor character on the part of the defendant, 

caution should be used in assessing the weight to be given to 

such allegations, especially where the defendant is not provided 

an opportunity to respond directly to them.

Cloum, 779 N.E.2d at 93. Here, however, Stevens did have the opportunity to dispute the 

accuracy of John’s letter at the sentencing hearing if he had so desired, but he did not do so. 

And, unlike the victim impact statement in Cloum, which related numerous hearsay 

statements and multiple general allegations of poor character on the part of the defendant, 

which conflicted with other evidence in the record and would have been difficult to respond 
6

to, John’s letter related just one distinct incident of which he and Stevens had personal 

knowledge and was uncontradicted. We conclude that Stevens’s lack of prior convictions is 

not as positive a reflection on his character as it might have been, given the undisputed 

previous attack on John.

Conclusion

Given the egregiousness of the offense and that there are reasons to discount the 

weightiness of Stevens’s guilty plea and lack of criminal history, we cannot say that his fiveyear sentence is inappropriate.

Affirmed.

CRONE, J., and PYLE, J., concur.