Opinion ID: 550846
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: There is insufficient evidence to support the petitioner's conviction of burglary;

Text: 10 2. Due process of law was violated when the prosecution was permitted to amend the burglary information to add the habitual offender count; 11 3. Due process of law was violated with reference to the adoption and reading of prosecution's tendered Instruction No. 3; 12 4. Due process of law was denied when a juror was excused and an alternate juror was substituted during deliberations of the bifurcated habitual offender proceedings; and 13 5. There is insufficient evidence to support the habitual offender finding. 14 Justice Shepard carefully and fully outlined the factual setting of this case as follows: 15 Dixon alleges that the State failed to produce sufficient evidence of probative value to support either the jury's guilty verdict on the burglary charge or the finding that Dixon was an habitual offender. 16 The evidence at trial showed that in the late afternoon of July 7, 1985, Mike Dixon offered money to two teenagers, Mishon Bradford and Stacey Irvin, as payment for entering a house, putting specified items in a bag and bringing the items to him while he waited nearby in his pickup truck. Dixon told the boys that someone had already broken into the house. The boys agreed, and Dixon drove them to James Jenkins' house. 17 Peter Anderson lived two houses down from James Jenkins. Anderson was napping when an unidentified man knocked on his door and told him that the house two doors down had been broken into. Thirty minutes to an hour later Anderson went outside to investigate. Anderson saw a black man, later identified as Mishon Bradford, exit Jenkins' house with a black bag and run away. Bradford ran toward a pickup truck occupied by Dixon. The truck was parked in an alley but still visible to Anderson. Anderson stopped a third man, later identified as Stacey Irvin, as he exited through Jenkins' front door. Anderson knew Jenkins was not at home. Anderson instructed Irvin to call the first man back. Irvin yelled, Mike! Mike! Mike! But Dixon and Bradford drove off in the truck, leaving Irvin to face Anderson and, presently, the police. 18 When Jenkins returned to his home, he found missing some thirty cassette tapes, a tape deck, a radio receiver and a VCR. The front door had been broken open by a rock smashed through the glass. The glass had not been broken when Jenkins left home earlier in the day and the door had been locked. The missing items were later recovered in the alley in a black plastic garbage bag. Two days later, police arrested Michael Dixon. 19 The evidence was sufficient to show beyond a reasonable doubt that Dixon knowingly or intentionally aided and induced Mishon Bradford and Stacey Irvin to break and enter the dwelling of James Jenkins with the intent to commit theft therein. This proof comprises all the essential elements of aiding and abetting burglary and is sufficient to support a conviction for burglary. See Ind.Code Sec. 35-41-2-4 (aiding or inducing); Sec. 35-43-2-1 (burglary). 20 Dixon further argues that the evidence is insufficient to support the habitual offender finding because the certified copies of the order book entry pertaining to a prior conviction reflect that the offense was committed on October 21, 1980, and that the trial and conviction occurred on June 12, 1980. The fact that the order book entry containing the June 12, 1980, date was file marked June 12, 1981 and certified by the clerk on June 12, 1981, creates the inference that the entry was incorrectly dated 1980 and that the true date is 1981. Evidence that Dixon was convicted of a felony on June 12, 1981, and a felony on May 15, 1974, is sufficient to support a finding that Dixon is an habitual offender. 21 Dixon, 524 N.E.2d at 4-5.