Opinion ID: 853697
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: License Suspensions and Mens Rea

Text: The law at issue in this appeal, Ind.Code § 9-30-10-4, reads: A person who operates a motor vehicle: (1) while the person's driving privileges are suspended under this chapter...; or (2) in violation of the restrictions imposed under this chapter... commits a Class D felony. Our case law has not been kind to a relatively simple statute. The section in question is part of a larger legislative scheme, Ind.Code ch. 9-30-10, governing repeat violation of traffic laws. The legislature has spelled out (1) the means by which a person is determined to be an habitual offender; (2) the means by which the BMV is to notify a person of its determination that the person is an habitual traffic violator and of his rights to challenge the determination before the agency; (3) how one may seek administrative review of BMV's determination; (4) how a person may seek judicial review of the BMV's determination; and (6) the offense and penalties of operating a motor vehicle in violation of the chapter. This Court's recent encounters with law in this field commenced with State v. Keihn, 542 N.E.2d 963 (Ind.1989). There, we confronted the fact that the criminal provisions for driving on a suspended license do not contain an explicit mens rea. We outlined a methodology for analyzing such criminal statutes in order to determine which ones should be interpreted as requiring a showing of intent and which ones should be regarded as strict liability offenses. Applying this methodology to the misdemeanor statute for driving while license is suspended, [2] we held that the State must prove the defendant's knowledge of the suspension of his license. Keihn, 542 N.E.2d at 968. In so holding, we associated ourselves with the decision in Burdine v. State, 510 N.E.2d 1385 (Ind.Ct.App.1987), trans. denied. In that case, the Court of Appeals held that to achieve a conviction for driving after having been adjudged an habitual traffic violator (HTV) the State must prove that the defendant knew or reasonably could have known that his driving privileges had been suspended as a result of having been determined to be a habitual offender. Id. at 1389, cited in Keihn, 542 N.E.2d at 964. There had been no proof in Burdine that the State had even mailed its suspension notice (or that Burdine knew about it in any other way), so the Court of Appeals held the evidence insufficient. Id. These two cases adequately addressed the question of criminal intent for purposes of driving while suspended or driving after being adjudged an habitual violator. For a while, they seemed to suffice. See, e.g., Stanek v. State, 519 N.E.2d 1263 (Ind.Ct.App.1988) (HTV conviction requires (1) driving, (2) after adjudged an HTV, and (3) showing that the defendant knew or reasonably could have known.) Then, the caselaw took a slight turn in Bishop v. State, 638 N.E.2d 1278 (Ind.Ct. App.1994). In Bishop's case, the BMV tendered as a trial exhibit its own computer record showing that it had mailed him a notice of his habitual violator adjudication, but it did not tender a copy of the notice itself. Bishop argued that the State thus had not proved that the notice said the right thing (including alerting him to the available avenues of relief) and thus had not establish[ed] the element of a valid suspension. Id. at 1279-80. The Bishop court characterized Stanek as standing for the proposition that proof of mailing the notice is an evidentiary prerequisite to proving that a suspension for being an habitual traffic law violator is valid and then opined that the same must logically be true concerning the contents of the notice. Id. at 1280. It thus declared the HTV adjudication invalid and reversed Bishop's criminal conviction for driving after being adjudicated an HTV. After Bishop, we used similar language about mailing as an evidentiary prerequisite. See, e.g., Brown, 677 N.E.2d at 519; Fields v. State, 679 N.E.2d 898, 900 (Ind.1997). As one might have foreseen, the use of the phrase evidentiary prerequisite led to a dispute over whether proof of mailing (or as here, the contents of the mailing) is a matter a party must raise at trial (as in, I object to the admission of Exhibit One on grounds of inadequate foundation) or whether it is an element of the crimes of driving while suspended or after being named an HTV and thus always available on appeal as part of a sufficiency of the evidence claim. It is this debate the Attorney General has asked us to resolve.