# In the



# Indiana Supreme Court

_________________________________ No. 87S00

- 1609

- LW

- 497
M ATHEW W. M C C ALLISTER , Appellant (Defendant),

V
. S TATE OF I NDIANA , Appellee ( Plaintiff ).

_________________________________ Appeal from the Warrick Superior Court I, No. 87D01

- 1402

- MR

- 74

The Honorable J. Zach Winsett , Judge

_________________________________

On Direct Appeal

_________________________________

February 1 5 , 2018 Slaughter, Justice . A Warrick County jury convicted Mathew McCallister of murder and conspiracy to commit murder , and he was sentenced to life imprisonment without parole. In this direct appeal , McCallister challenges (i) the sufficiency of the evidence supporting his conviction s , (ii) various evidentiary rulings by the trial court, and (iii) the propriety of his se ntence. W e affirm the trial court’s judgment. A TTORNEY FOR A PPELLANT A TTORNEYS FOR A PPELLEE Jacob P. Wahl Curtis T. Hill Jasper, IN Attorney General of Indiana Angela N. Sanchez Supervising Deputy Attorney General Indianapolis, IN2 Fact ual and Procedural History
We recite the facts most favorable to the judgment. During February 2014, Defendant, Mathew McCallister, lived with his girlfriend , Kelli Wyrick, in a series of hotel s in Evansville, Indiana. Also living in Evansville hotels then were their friends Shawn Grigsby and Grigsby’s girlfriend

. The two couples would sometimes visit each other’s rooms to use illegal drugs. On February 16, the couples were staying in adjoining rooms at a local Fairfield Inn , and they invited McCallister’s sister, Jade Stigall ; her fiancé , David Lackey ; and McCallister’s friend , Joseph Nelson ; to join them at the hotel to smoke methamphetamine.
A. Would you “like to play”? At some point t hat evening, eve ryone left McCallister’s room except Stigall and Nelson. After t he two had smoked meth , Nelson inched close r to Stigall on the shared bed and asked if she would “like to play ”

. Stigall consider ed Nelson’s pitch to be an unwelcomed sexual advance . S he sent her fiancé , Lackey , a text message explaining what had happened and ask ed him to return to the hotel. Lackey could not return immediately but told McCallister what had reportedly happened between his sister and Nelson. McCallister then called his sister to get her first

- hand account

. After hearing his sister’s version, McCallister told Lackey and Grigsby to get Nelson out of the hotel and drive him to a local convenience store, where Mc Callister and Wyrick would meet them.

B. “Start making amends” After midnight on February 17, Grigsby and Lackey followed McCallister’s instructions , and the two of them returned to the hotel . They picked up Stigall and Nelson and then left for the convenience store in a vehicle Stigall had borrowed

. They met McCallis ter and Wyrick at the convenience store. McCallister got into the vehicle and directed Stigall, who was driving, to a rural area outside of Boonville in adjacent Warrick County. As they drove, McCallister, who was in the back seat with Nelson and Grigsby, told Nelson to “start making amends” with “ which God or to which sort he believes in.” McCallister asked Stigall to repeat what had happened, and she recounted that Nelson asked her whether she “wanted to play”. Nelson tried to apologize, but Stigall told him to “shut the fuck up.” McCallister also asked Grigsby “if he had

... the clip” , apparently referring to the magazine of Grigsby’s automatic handgun, which Grigsby was showing off earlier that evening.3

McCallister eventually directed Stigall to park n ear the Liberty Mine, a coal mine located in a remote area of Warrick County . The mine has open stock piles and provides coal via railroad car to the Alcoa Corporation plant in nearby Newburgh. McCallister left the vehicle first, followed by the other guys and then Stigall. McCallister and Grigsby walked alongside Nelson , with Stigall and Lackey walking a short distance behind. Stigall saw Grigsby give his gun to McCallister.
C. “Spark”, “pop” and “flash” As they walked, t he men went around a corner and were mome ntarily out of Stigall’s field of vision

. W hen she turned the corner , she saw Nelson on his knees with McCallister and Grigsby standing behind him. She then saw a “ spark go off from the gun” and “heard the pop and seen [sic] the flash” as McCallister shot Nelson in the back of the head. An obstructed view prevented Stigall from see ing t he gun in McCallister’s hand, bu t she saw McCallister’s arm raised directly behind Nelson’s head, observed the flash and heard the gunshot, and then watched McCallister’s arm drop to his side as Nelson fell forward. As t he group left the crime scene , they left Nelson’s body behind. Stigall drove the three men back to Evansville. En route, McCallister directed Stigall to drive to a specific locati on where he disposed of the gun and the ammunition down a sewer drain. The n the y returned to the hotel. Almost immediately, M cCallister and Lackey “started freaking out about something” and promptly left. Stigall did not hear from McCallister or Lackey aga in until Lackey called her later that morning at about 8:00 a.m. Stigall helped collect the clothes they had been wearing while with Nelson. Lackey and Stigall burned those clothes in a rural area. Later that morning, Nelson’s corpse was discovered in a co al

- conveyor chute at the Alcoa plant

. Video surveillance at Alcoa showed that the body arrived from the mine on a train car and had been emptied into the plant’s coal

- conveyor system earlier that day. An autopsy revealed that Nelson was killed by a single gunshot wound to the head

— a so - called “contact” wound, meaning that w hen the shot was fired, the gun’s barrel was either touching , or no more than a half

- inch away from, the victim’s head. The bullet entered Nelson’s neck about half an inch behind his right ear and exited through his right eye. The bullet’s trajectory was consistent with Stigall’s account that Nelson was murdered execution

- style. A toxicology test showed that Nelson’s body contained alcohol, meth amphetamine , amphetamines, and cannabinoi ds, the last of which indicat ed marijuana use. Coal dust was found on Nelson’s body but not in his lungs.4

A few days after police recovered Nelson’s body, they obtained surveillance video from the Fairfield Inn. The video showed Nelson leaving the hotel wi th Grigsby, Stigall, and Lackey, prompting police to suspect the three knew something about Nelson’s murder. Police already had information to support unrelated drug charges against Stigall and Lackey, so they brought charges and arrested them in hopes of persuading one of them to explain what happened to Nelson . Stigall not only gave detailed information about the murder , but also took police to the sewer drain where police recovered Grigsby’s handgun and to the burn pile , where she had disposed of the clo thes

. For his part, Lackey showed police where the murder occurred . There they found rocks stained with Nelson’s blood and a spent shell casing , which b allistics testing showed was fired from the recovered handgun

. D. C onvict ion and LWOP sentence When McCallister went to trial in July 2016, Stigall had already pleaded guilty to assisting a criminal with murder. She testified that McCallister was the shooter. Grigsby, who by then had pleaded guilty to conspiracy to murder Nelson and received a twent y - year sentence, testified as a defense witness that he (Grigsby) had shot Nelson. After a six

- day trial, the jury found McCallister guilty of murder and conspiracy to commit murder, a class A felony. During the penalty phase, the jury found as an aggravat ing circumstance that McCallister committed the murder while on parole. The jury also determined th is aggravating factor outweighed any mitigating circumstance s , and it unanimously recommended a sentence of life without parole. T he trial court imposed that sentence for murder and a concurrent forty

- year term for conspiracy. McCallister now appeals his convictions and sentence.
Discussion and Decision

I. McCallister’s convictions were s upported by sufficient evidence, and we decline to reweigh the evidence. McCallister contends the evidence was insufficient to sustain either his murder or conspiracy conviction s
. For sufficiency challenge s , we neither reweigh evidence nor judge witness credibility. Gibson v. State , 51 N.E.3d 204, 210 (Ind. 2016), reh’g denied . We consider only the evidence most favorable to the judgment together with all reasonable inferences that may be drawn5

from the evidence. Id. We will affirm the judgment if it is supported by substantial evidence , even if the evidence is conflicting. Id. On this record, w e hold that the evidence supports McCallister’s convictions, and that he fails to satisfy our stringent “incredible dubiosity” rule, according to which a reviewing court may substitute its judgment for that of the jury only where the evid ence supporting the defendant’s guilt is uncorroborated and so highly implausible as to be unreliable.
A. Conflicting evidence In support of reversal, McCallister argues that t he evidence supporting his conviction s is

“ directly contradicted by other direct ev idence”

. That is true but beside the point. There was indeed conflicting evidence about whether McCallister was the trigger man . A nd McCallister contends that Stigall, the sole witness who testified that he had shot Nelson, was not credible

. But th ese argument s misapprehend our limited role as a reviewing court. We do not reweigh evidence or substitute our view of the evidence for that of the jury . Nor do we ask whether the jury might have reached a different result based on the evidence it heard

. Our i nquiry, rather, is whether record evidence supports the jury ’s verdict. Under that standard, the evidence is sufficient to support McCallister’s conviction s. Stigall gave detailed testimony outlining what happened before, during, and after McCallister shot Nelson. As recounted above, a fter learning that Nelson had proposition ed his sister, McCallister directed her and the others to take Nelson to a convenience store. Surveillance video corroborated that Nelson , Stigall, and the others left the hotel and met McCallister at the store. Next, she testified that McCallister got into her car at the store and directed her where to drive in rural Warrick County. While they drove, McCallister recommended that Nelson make peace with his God and asked Grigsby if he had the “clip” with him. After parking where McCallister had instructed her, everyone got out of the car, and Stigall saw McCallister put his hand on Nelson’s shoulder as they left the vehicle. Stigall then saw Gri g sby hand the gun to McCallister and, moments later, saw Nelson kneel on the ground in front of McCallister. McCallister’s arm was extended in front of him at the back of Nelson’s head. Then she saw a flash, heard a gunshot, and saw her brother’s arm drop to his side as Nelson fell forward. P olice la ter found Nelson’s blood on the ground there, along with a shell casing from the gun McCallister used.6

Stigall also testified she drove McCallister to dispose of the gun in a sewer drain. Only days later, she led police to that same location where they recovered the gun and ammunition. Ballistics testing confirmed the gun found in the sewer was the same gun that fired the shell casing found at the murder scene. Later, McCallister directed Lackey and Stigall to go to a rur al site to burn the clothes they and the others had worn. Stigall eventually led police to the location of the burn pile. I tems recovered there were too burned to be definitively connected to the crime , but they appeared to be items of clothing, including the sole of a shoe and metal rivets that could have come from a pair of jeans. The jury was entitled to credit Stigall’s testimony over conflicting evidence it heard. And t his evidence is sufficient to prove McCallister’s convictions for murder and conspir acy beyond a reasonable doubt

. B. Not “ i ncredibl y dubi ous ” Despite this evidence, McCallister asks us to reverse his convictions because, he argues, Stigall’s testimony is incredibly dubious. Under our “incredible dubiosity” rule , we will invade the jury’s pr ovince for judging witness credibility only in exceptionally rare circumstance s . The evidence supporting the conviction must have been offered by a sole witness ; the witness’s testimony must have been coerced, equivocal , and wholly uncorroborated ; it must have been “inherently improbable” or of dubious credibility; and there must have been no circumstantial evidence of the defendant’s guilt. See Moore v. State , 27 N.E.3d 749, 755 (Ind. 2015). W e decline to disturb the jury’s verdict on this record b ecause McCallister fails to establish th is rare, limited exception applies here.
For three reasons, Stigall’s testimony does not meet the requirements for applying our rule of incredible dubiosity

. First, Stigall was not the sole testifying witness. Grigsb y, another eyewitness to the crime, also testified. Although he differed with Stigall on several issues, including the shooter ’s identity, much of his testimony corro borated Stigall’s account of that night. He acknowledged McCallister called him and told him to take Nelson from the h otel to the convenience store. He corroborated Stigall’s testimony about the group leaving the h otel, meeting McCallister and Wyrick at the store, and then driving Lackey, McCallister, Grigsby, and Nelson to the location where Nelson was shot. Grigsby confirmed that during the drive to the murder7

scene, there was discussion about Nelson’s disrespectful behavior. And Grigsby confirmed his gun was the murder weapon.
Second, t he events to which Stigall testified, including her fingering McCallister as the trigger man, are not inherently improbable , unimaginable , or otherwise outside the realm of human experience

. H er narrative describing McCallister as the shooter is consisten t with the theory that Nelson was killed as payback for disrespecting others and betraying their trust. As to the shooting itself, Stigall testified that as everyone was exiting the vehicle, she saw Grigsby hand the gun to McCallister; after they walked a short distance, she saw Nelson kneeling in front of McCallister; she then saw McCallister raise his arm; she heard a “pop” and saw a spark go off from the gun; and she saw Nelson fall forward. On direct examination, Stigall testified as follows : Q: Okay. And at that point in time who had the gun in their hands?

A: Mat [McCallister]. Q: And he was firing the weapon at Mr. Nelson; is that correct?

A: Yes. Q: And you’re sure that that’s what you saw?

A: Yes.

* * * Q: And is it possible that you’re mistaken?

A: I don’t believe I am, but we were all messed up on meth.

On cross

- examination, Stigall clarified that she was about ten feet from McCallister during the shooting when she saw the “flash”

. When asked if she was sure McCallister was the shooter, she answered, “To my belief. What I believe is the truth of what I saw, yes.” When asked if it was possible that Grigsby was the shooter, Stigall replied, “I don’t believe it’s possible

. ... I seen a flash, but I also seen my brother’s arm up, and then it went down after the flash.”8

Third, a wealth of circumstantial evidence supports Stigall’s account of the group’s communications and whereabouts that evening . A recording of a phone conversation among Stigall, Grigsby, and McCallister supports her testimony that McCallister directed the group to lure Nelson out of the h otel. Surveillance footage from the Fairfield Inn shows members of the group leaving and later returning on a timeline consistent with Stigall’s account. And Stigall later assist ed officers by showing them the sewer drain where the group had disposed of the gun and the remote area in Warrick County where she and Lackey made the burn pile.
McCallister tries to discredit Stigall’s testimony by pointing to her drug use, her lack of

s leep, and contradictory testimony from other witnesses

. He also argues that Stigall made inconsistent statements before trial concerning who shot Nelson, and that the prosecution dismissed some of Stigall’s criminal charges, as if to suggest she gave perjured testimony against McCallister in exchange for favorable treatment from the State. But the jury was made aware of these supposed flaws with Stigall’s testimony and elected to credit it nonetheless. Whatev er ill effects Stigall may have experienced from using drugs and lacking sleep did not prevent her from communicating electronically with L ackey about Nelson’s supposed advances in the hotel room , or following up with her brother by phone , or driving the g roup to the convenience store and then the crime scene , or collecting and burning the clothes , or afterward leading police to the burn pile and storm drain. In addition, Stigall denied making inconsistent statements before trial, and there was counter

- evid ence that dismissal of charges against Stigall was unrelated to the resolution of this case

. It is noteworthy that there are many aspects of Stigall’s testimony that McCallister does not challenge as incredible. His selective criticism is tantamount to a r equest that we reweigh the evidence. On this record, we decline to substitute our judgment for that of the jury

. As to conspiracy, McCallister argues that “[n]o witness ever testified that a conspiracy existed to kill Nelson.” But this record contains ampl e evidence to allow the jury to infer all three elements of a conspiracy : intent to commit a felony , agreement with another person to commit the felony , and an overt act in furtherance of the agreement. See Perkins v. State , 483 N.E.2d 1379, 1385 (Ind. 198 5). Perhaps t he most damning evidence is Grigsby’s admission , under oath , that he pleaded guilty to conspiracy to murder Nelson.9

II. The trial court did not commit reversible error in admit ting the evidence to which McCallister objects. During its case

- in

- chief, the State introduced evidence corroborat ing Stigall’s testimony with various electronic data the police obtained during the ir investigation

. Among the corroborating evidence were surveillance video from the Fairfield Inn , an audio recording of a conversation between McCalli ster and his girlfriend while she visited him in jail , and audio recordings and text messages that the FBI extracted from the participants’ mobile phones . T he trial judge admitted this evidence over McCallister’s objection s , and McCallister renews those objections on appeal. In reviewing the admission or exclusion of evidence, we determine whether the trial court abused its discretion. McCarthy v. State , 749 N.E.2d 528, 536 (Ind. 2001). We will

reverse only if the trial court’s ruling was clearly against the logic and effect of the facts and circumstances before it. Knapp v. State , 9 N.E.3d 1274, 1281 (Ind. 2014) , cert. denied , 135 S. Ct. 978 (2015)

. We hold the admission of this challenged evidence was not reversible error.
A. Video from Fairfield Inn
The trial court did not abuse its discretion by admitting State’s Exhibit 23

— a DVD purporting to show surveillance video from a stationary camera overlooking the lobby at the Fairfield Inn, where several membe rs of the group were staying on February 16 and 17, 2014.
At trial, Stigall testified that she, Nelson, Lackey, and Grigsby left the hotel together not long before the murder. W hen the State sought to admit surveillance video from the hotel lobby for the h ours both before and after Nelson’s murder, McCallister objected that the State had not laid an adequate foundation for its admissibility because the hotel manager who testified about the surveillance system was not employed there when the video was taken. After a police officer identified the video as the one he obtained from the hotel just days after the murder, the court admitted the video over McCallister’s objection.
The trial court was entitled to admit the surveillance footage as a “silent witness” , meaning as substantive rather than demonstrative evidence. For evidence to be admitted for that purpose, there must be a strong showing of authenticity and competency , including proof that the evidence

was not altered. See Knapp , 9 N.E.3d at 1282 (stating that foundation for “silent witness” photo and security

- camera footage requires court to be persuaded of their competency and authenticity10

to relative certainty.). T he bottom

- left corner of the video shows a time

- and

- date stamp. S urveillance footage shows the group of four leav ing the Fairfield I nn at 2:47 a.m. on February 17, with Nelson carrying a blue duffle bag. It then shows the group , including McCallister, arriv ing back at the hotel nearly two hours later at 4:38 a.m. without the blue duffle bag

— and without Nelson

. On appeal, McCallister argues the State presented an inadequate foundation for admitting the video because the h otel’s general manager who authenticated it did not begin working at the Fairfield Inn until September 2014, seven months aft er the murder. Although the manager was not employed there at the time, he testified he was familiar with the hotel’s video

- surveillance system, which records the lobby. H e recognized the video of the lobby “ [ w ] ithout a doubt” , due to its setting, the furn iture, and employees shown in the video. He said the video system affixes a date

and

- time stamp , and that the current stamp is accurate and has been for as long as he has worked there. The manager explained that a prior manager had been the custodian of the disputed recording and had provided it to police in DVD form, and that he (th e current manager ) did not see the DVD until after it was turned over to police

. The current manager did not compare the recording on the DVD to anything in the h otel’s video archives. But p olice d etective Matt Young identified State’s Exhibit 23 as the DVD containing the surveillance video, which he obtained from the h otel within days after Nelson’s body was found. We reject McCallister’s challenge to this evidence for two rea sons. First, the trial court did not abuse its discretion by admitting the video. Although the manager was not able to say with certainty that the DVD contained accurate footage of the lobby on February 17, he did authenticate it in several important respe cts . He verif ied the time

- and

- date

- stamp system was accurate and attuned to “standard accepted time” and was reset “in January each year ” to ensure accuracy. He “recognize[d] every piece of furniture and some of the people working” in the lobby. And he sai d the surveillance system is always on , and the videos are backed up to “the cloud”

— meaning they are saved to external servers accessible to the h otel’s managers through the internet. Th e se verifications, along with the officer’s testimony concerning chain of custody, provide sufficient grounds for the trial court to have admit ted the video.11

Second, even if the DVD were admitted improperly , any error would have been harmless because it did not prejudice McCallister’s substantive rights. Blount v. State , 22 N.E.3d 559, 564 (Ind. 2014) (citation omitted). The DVD’s probable impact on the jury was slight , considering other evidence that was properly admitted. Id. Testimony by Stigall, Grisgby, and Amy Jo Downs (Grigsby’s girlfriend at the time of the murde r) confirm ed the timeline reflected in the video. McCallister himself does not dispute that Stigall, Lackey, Grigsby , and Nelson left the hotel around 2: 45 a.m., or that Stigall, Lackey, Grigsby , and he returned about 4:30 a.m. Finally, McCallister did not object to the admission of State’s Exhibits 114 and 115

— photos or “screen shots” made from the video showing the four leaving the hotel

— and the se shots were admitted into evidence. Because th e surveillance video is duplicative of other evi dence, even if t he DVD had been admitted in error, the error would be harmless.
B. Jailhouse c onversation
Nor did the trial court abuse its discretion by admitting a recorded phone conversation between McCallister and his girlfriend, Kelli Wyrick , while she visited him at the Vanderburgh County Jail.

A Warrick County sheriff’s d eputy had a warrant to search Wyrick’s cell phone. The deputy learned Wyrick would be visiting McCallister at the j ail on March 7 , 2014 , at around 12:40 p.m. The deputy met with her at the jail and arrange d for her to accompany him to the s heriff’s office after her visit with McCallister. The jail has a prisoner

- visitor meeting booth where parties communicat e by phone. The jail posts notices that visitations are monitored and recorded and can be taped by the s heriff’s office

. Adjacent to the meeting booth is a lobby area with a telephone that can monitor prisoner

- visitor conversation s . Using that phone and his own digital recorder , rather than s heriff’s equipment, the deputy r ecorded McCallister’s conversation with Wyrick. At trial, the State played about fifteen seconds of that conversation over McCallister’s objection, and the court admitted the entire half

- hour recording over his objection as State’s Exhibit 111. The record does not disclose which fifteen seconds the jury heard

. McCallister objected to the recording , claiming “this is probably a violation of federal wiretapping laws.” On appeal, McCallister renews his argument that the trial court should have suppressed the recording12

because it violated both the Federal Wiretap Act and his privilege against self

- incrimination under the United States and Indiana constitutions

. We do not consider McCallister ’s constitutional argument because he waived it in two respects : by failing to raise it at trial , and by failing to explain how the pr ivilege was implicated on this record. McCallister was not subject to police interrogation. And while McCallister was being record ed , he was not spea king to law enforcement but to his girlfriend over a phone system that both were advised was being monitored by law

- enforcement personnel. We likewise decline to reach the merits of McCallister’s argument under t he Federal Wiretap Act , although two of the Act’s exemptions

— for “prior consent”, 18 U.S.C. § 2511(2)(c), and for a law

- enforcement officer acting “in the ordinary course of his duties”, id. § 2510(5)(a)(ii)

— would seem to apply here.

E ven if , as McCallister claims , the trial court erred in admitting the recorded conversation, any error was harmless. McCallister nowhere describes the contents of the recording. And he acknowledges the recording was neither “incriminat[ing] ” nor “inculpatory”. Thus, McCallister is not entitled to relief beca use he was not prejudiced by this non - “inculpatory” and non - “incriminat[ing]” testimony.
C . Mobile
- phone evidence Although several trial exhibits relat ed to the mobile phone s of David Lackey and Kelli Wyrick , McCallister fails to explain precisely which e xhibits and court rulings he is objecting to on appeal. His appellat e brief explains that he objected at trial to the admission of evidence about the phones or the ir contents on chain

- of

- custody grounds . But he does not focus on chain

- of

custody issues on appeal or cite any legal authorities discussing chain of custody. Instead, he acknowledges the “cell phone instruments are authenticated” but claims the “identity of the author(s) is not.” We presume this means McCallister is challenging the authentication of him as the author of the text messages obtained from Lackey’s phone and as a participant in the conversation obtained from Wyrick’s phone. We discuss each phone separately.

1. Lackey’s phone Lackey’s mobile phone was identified at trial as State’s Exhibit 32 , but the trial court did not admit the phone into evidence. Neither did the court admit State’s Exhibits 112 and 113

—13

photographs of text messages purportedly exchanged between McCallister and Lackey. T he court did admit State’s Exh ibit 107, an F BI report detailing the contents of Lackey’s mobile phone , and McCallister did not object to its admission

. Th e report includes several text messages sent to and from Lackey’s phone. McCallister argues the FBI report “was shown to the jury over Defense obj ections to the chain of custody and that no foundation was presented to prove the witness could identify McCallister as a participant in the transmissions.” But the record is clear that McCallister did not object to chain of custody concerning the FBI repo rt: “I have no further questions and no objection to that exhibit.” McCallister did object to testimony from d etective Bryan Flowers , who identif ied one of the phone numbers from the report as McCallister’s

. Detective Flowers testified that he obtained the phone number from McCallister’s parole officer, Heather Sheely, and matched it to one in the report. Flowers further testified that th is number was labeled in Lackey’s phone as “M

M

- C”

. Flowers did not try to confirm the number was McCallister’s through his service provider, AT&T

. “To satisfy the requirement of authenticating or identifying an item of evidence, the proponent must produce evidence sufficient to support a finding that the item is what the proponent claims it is.” Ind. Evid ence R ule 901(a). Here, the State presented the testimony of police d etective Flowers , who obtained McCallister’s phone number through his parole officer and cross

- checked it with the FBI report. The State also presented the report itself, admitted without objection from the defense, which shows the number in question was labeled in Lackey’s phone as “M

- M

- C ”

— which the jury was entitled to conclude referred to Mat hew McCallister. Those two pieces of evidence represent a sufficient foundation for admitting the report. Any lingering uncertainty over whom Lackey had been texting with goes only to the report’s weight and not its admissibility. The trial court did not abuse its discretion by admitting into evidence an FBI report detailing the contents of text messages sent to and from Lackey’s mobile phone.

2 . Wyrick’s p hone
Police obtained Kelli Wyrick’s cell phone while executing a search warrant of her Jeep , the vehicle she drove to the convenience store the night Nelson was murdered

. Her phone was identified at trial as State’s Exhibit 33 but not admitted as evidence. The trial court did admit14

State’s Exhibit 108, a n FBI report based o n data obtained from her phone, including a conversation from the early

- morning hours of February 17. When the State as ked to play the recording of that conversation and provide the jurors with a transcript (State’s Exhibit 116), McCallister objected that no one had adequately identified the speakers on the recording or identified in the transcript. Detective Flowers testi fied that he was familiar with the voices from the recording and on the transcript because he had “listened to hundreds of hours of all of these subjects on the phone.” McCallister renew s the same objection on appeal, arguing “[a]lthough the cell phone ins truments are authenticated, the identity of the author(s) is not.”

T he authentication requirement of Evidence Rule 901(a) is satisfied by testimony identifying a person’s voice , “ whether heard firsthand or through mechanical or electronic transmission or r ecording based on hearing the voice at any time under circumstances that connect it with the alleged speaker” . Evid. R. 901(b)(5)

. Th is is precisely what Detective Flowers offered at trial

—his opinion that the voices in the recorded phone call belong to Wyrick, Grigsby, and McCallister , based on his familiarity with their voices from his investigation. The recording and transcript were properly authenticated, and the trial court did not abuse its discr etion by admitting th em.
As with the other evidence, any error by the trial court in admitting State’s Exhibit 108 was harmless because it did not prejudice McCallister. McCallister himself denies any prejudice resulting from this evidence, saying “nothing in the conversations was inculpatory” ; t he phone transmissions neither “ [ i ] ncriminate McCallister” nor prove anything “with respect to McCallister” ; and “the contents

... provide nothing to advance the argument, or support the verdict, that McCallister shot Nelson. ”

III. McCallister’s LWOP sentence is neither unlawful nor improper. Finally, McCallister argues that his life

- without

- parole sentence for murder is both constitutionally disproportionate and inappropriate under Appellate Rule 7(B) given the natur e of the offense and the character of the offender. As explained below, w e reject both arguments. As an aside, w e note that McCallister also received a forty

- year concurrent sentence for conspiracy to commit murder. He does not challenge that portion of his sentence, so we affirm it without further discussion.15

A. Not disproportionate At trial, the State pursued a sentence of life without parole against McCallister , alleging as
an aggravating circumstance that he murder ed Nelson while on parole for another crime

. Although McCallister raised several proposed mitigatin g circumstances

— including his GED and college

course credits, his family and social support, and his respectable living environment

— the jury found the State had prove d beyond a reaso nable doubt that McCallister was on parole when he murder ed Nelson , and that this aggravating circumstance outweighed any mitigators. The jury unanimously recommended a sentence of life without parole, and the trial court imposed that sentence accordingly.
McCallister asks us to vacate his life

- without

- parole sentence and impose a term of years, arguing the trial court “did not fully consider the above

- referenced proposed mitigators, and abused its discretion in assigning their weight.” McCallister faults t he trial court because it “did not issue a sentencing order or address aggravators and mitigators, and the weight of each before balancing the aggravators and mitigators and rendering the LWOP sentence.” Generally, we leave to the trial court the responsibility to find and weigh the proposed aggravators and mitigators. Covington v. State , 842 N.E.2d 345, 348 (Ind. 2006). We review the relative weight given these factors for a manifest abuse of discretion , Conley v. S tate , 972 N.E.2d 864, 87 3 (Ind. 2012) , and conclude there was no abuse of discretion here.

I t was the jury , not the court, that found the on - parole aggravator beyond a reasonable doubt, weighed it against mitigating circumstances, and unanimously determine d the proper sentence was life without parole . McCallister identifies no legal authority requiring the court to issue findings regarding the presence of aggravating and mitigating factors , or the relative weight to be given them , when the jury recommend s s entence.
McCallister also admits that on - parole status “is a valid, constitutional aggravating circumstance for a Life Without Parole sentence” . But he argues that his own “parole status for this D

- felony[] is so trivial compared to murder [] that it makes this sentence grossly disproportionate ” . We recently rejected similar arguments in Shoun v. State , 67 N.E.3d 635, 641

- 42 (Ind. 2017) , in which we affirmed the defendant’s LWOP sentence although his prior offense

was “not so severe”

. “ W hile Shoun’s prior offense, being a habitual traffic offender, is not so16

severe, Shoun was given the privilege to serve his sentence for that prior offense on work release rather than in prison, and he abused that privilege by fleeing the work release facility and

com mitting murder

. ” See also Knapp , 9 N.E.3d at 1290 (“Committing murder while on probation for any felony offense, even a low

- level felony, is therefore a particularly flagrant abuse of that grace and leniency.”)

. McCallister provides no reason for stray ing from th at rationale here.
B. Not inappropriate
McCallister also argues that his sentence is inappropriate , and he asks us to revise it under Appellate Rule 7( B ) . This rule authorizes our appellate courts to “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.” Ind. Appellate R ule 7(B). The p rincipal role of 7(B) review is to leaven the outliers , rather than to achieve a perceived “correct” sentence. Gibson , 51 N.E.3d at 215 (cit ation omitted ). We defer to the trial court’s sentence and impose on the defendant the burden of persuading us that a revised sentence is warranted. Rice v. State , 6 N.E.3d 940, 946 (Ind. 2014)

. McCallister argues that Nelson’s murder was “not particularly gruesome or grotesque”. And for his “redeeming qualities”, McCallister points out that he “ earned a GED and some co llege and technical credits. ” To be sure, educational accomplishments can reflect favorably on a defendant under our character

- of

- the

- offender analysis. But McCallister’s accomplishments are offset by his premeditated, execution

- style murder of Nelson. In addition, the presentence

investigation report recounts McCallister’s considerable criminal history, including acts of juvenile delinquency and adult convictions leading to prior periods of incarceration. We conclude McCallister’s sentence is not a n outlie r in need of correction and decline to revise it under Rule 7(B).
Conclusion
For th e se reasons, we affirm McCallister’s conviction s and sentence.
Rush, C.J., and David, Massa, and Goff, JJ., concur.