Opinion ID: 853725
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Sufficiency of Evidence for Murder

Text: Ewing contends that his felony murder conviction cannot stand because the cause of death was the voluntary cessation of life support. The State offers two responses. First, the State argues that Hyatte was already dead before life support was withdrawn. Second, the State contends that withdrawal of support in these circumstances was not an intervening cause of death. After hearing all the evidence and being instructed on the applicable law, the jury found Ewing guilty of felony murder. There is sufficient evidence to support its verdict on both theories. Ewing's claim is essentially an attack on the sufficiency of the evidence, which is reviewed under well-settled principles. We do not reweigh evidence or assess the credibility of witnesses. Rather, we look to the evidence and reasonable inferences drawn therefrom that support the verdict and will affirm the conviction if there is probative evidence from which a reasonable jury could have found the defendant guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. Taylor v. State, 681 N.E.2d 1105, 1110 (Ind.1997). As for the claim that Hyatte was alive at the point of withdrawal from life support, the jury was instructed on the definition of death that appears at Indiana Code § 1-1-4-3, which provides in relevant part: (a) Only an individual who has sustained either: (1) irreversible cessation of circulatory and respiratory functions; or (2) irreversible cessation of all functions of the entire brain, including the brain stem; is dead. A determination of death must be made in accordance with accepted medical standards. Dr. Rade Pejic, a surgeon, testified that he treated Hyatte shortly after his arrival in the emergency room. Hyatte had sustained a major laceration of the left femoral arteries which caused a massive amount of blood loss. As a matter of fact, he was in full cardiac arrest.... He testified that Hyatte was being coded for more than a half an hour, maybe forty-five minutes in the ER before they took him to surgery. Hyatte received approximately twenty pints of bloodapproximately three times the normal blood volume for an individual his sizewhile in the emergency room. Hyatte then spent two or two and a half hours in surgery during which Pejic repaired the wound and stopped the bleeding. In the next few days Pejic ran two electroencephalograms that indicated a very significant derangement of his brain cell ... function. Eleven days after Hyatte's admission to the hospital, Pejic performed an angiogram to determine if there was any blood flow to the brain. He concluded that Hyatte had no blood flow to his brain whatsoever which told everybody that he had irreversible brain death since he had no blood supply to his brain for approximately eleven days. He observed that [w]e gave his body basically every possiblemedical surgical opportunity to see if there is any possible hope of him coming back to life in lay terms, and after numerous consultations with the neurologist, the neurosurgeons, the medical doctors, it was obvious that this patient was, in lay sense, brain dead. Dr. Dean Hawley, a forensic pathologist, performed an autopsy on Hyatte and also testified at trial. He opined that by the time the openings in the arteries were repaired in surgery, Hyatte's brain had already died from lack of blood flow as a consequence of hemorrhagic shock.... Following hemorrhagic shock, his brain was lost, but his heart and lungs remained viable on life support.... His brain then began to degenerate to an almost completely liquified state. Hawley testified that Hyatte died as the result of anoxic encephalopathy, which is brain death, due to a stab wound to his left groin. When asked to explain anoxic encephalopathy, he offered the following summary: Mr. Hyatte was stabbed. At the time of his stabbing, he began to bleed profusely. He was bleeding so much that his heart was not able to pump a vital supply of oxygen to his brain and his brain died. At that point, he was stabilized from bleeding and his heart and lungs were resuscitated. He was placed on mechanical ventilation in a true dead state. In other words, in Indiana there is a legal definition for death and that legal definition includes brain death. He was maintained dead on a ventilator with life support for a period of several days and then life support was discontinued.... Based on the testimony of Drs. Pejic and Hawley, the jury had ample evidence to conclude that Hyatte was brain dead at the time the ventilator was disconnected. The same evidence supports the conclusion that withdrawal was not an intervening cause of death, even if some minimal brain function remained. [I]t is the rule of homicide law that a defendant is responsible for the death of the decedent if the injuries inflicted contribute either mediately or immediately to the death. Swafford v. State, 421 N.E.2d 596, 602 (Ind.1981). In order for an intervening cause to break the chain of criminal responsibility, it must be so extraordinary that it would be unfair to hold the appellant responsible for the actual result. Sims v. State, 466 N.E.2d 24, 26 (Ind.1984). Ewing concedes in his reply brief that recent Court of Appeals' opinions hold that the removal of life support is not an intervening cause that breaks the connection between the defendant's actions and the victim's death. See, e.g., Spencer v. State, 660 N.E.2d 359, 360-61 (Ind.Ct.App.1996). However, he argues that these cases are bad law as they stand for the proposition that an unfettered decision to euthanize can lead to a murder conviction. He contends that a defendant should not be subject to a murder charge when a victim wants to end his or her life because of impairment of a bodily function or when life support is removed because the victim's insurance ran out. That may be true, but neither of these circumstances is present here. Where life support is removed because, as here, Hyatte had suffered irreversible cessation of all functions of his entire brain, see Ind.Code § 1-1-4-3(a), the removal of life support is not an intervening cause that relieves the killer from the inexorable consequences of his or her actions. There is sufficient evidence to support the felony murder conviction.