Opinion ID: 853370
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Voluntary Intoxication as a Defense Under Indiana Law

Text: The Court of Appeals opinion contains a more detailed account of the history of voluntary intoxication as a defense to the mens rea element of crimes. In summary, at the time of the debates surrounding the 1851 Constitution, drunkenness and intoxicating liquors were viewed quite harshly. Proposals to the Constitution were made to prohibit licenses to sell liquor and to prevent the State from benefiting from liquor sales. At common law, intoxication was itself an offense, and the prevailing view was that one crime was no defense to another. [1] By 1860, this Court, consistent with other states, had come to the view that evidence of intoxication might be allowed in certain homicide crimes. O'Herrin v. State, 14 Ind. 420, 420, 1860 WL 4131 (1860). Thirty years later, this Court held that evidence of intoxication was admissible to reduce a first-degree murder conviction to second-degree. Aszman v. State, 123 Ind. 347, 353-59, 24 N.E. 123, 125-27 (1890). By 1901, the Court had extended the use of intoxication evidence to all crimes requiring proof of specific intent. Booher v. State, 156 Ind. 435, 448-49, 60 N.E. 156, 160 (1901). This became the majority position in the United States. See Montana v. Egelhoff, 518 U.S. 37, 46-47, 116 S.Ct. 2013, 135 L.Ed.2d 361 (1996). In 1980, the legislature added Indiana Code section 35-41-3-5(b), which attempted to limit the use of voluntary intoxication as a defense to crimes that required with intent to or with intention to. Four years later, in Terry v. State, 465 N.E.2d 1085, 1088 (Ind.1984), this Court held that, [a]ny factor which serves as a denial of the existence of mens rea must be considered by a trier of fact before a guilty finding is entered, and concluded that the statute was unconstitutional. In 1996, the United States Supreme Court held that a state could prohibit a criminal defendant from offering evidence of voluntary intoxication to negate the requisite mens rea without violating the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Egelhoff, 518 U.S. at 56, 116 S.Ct. 2013. Therefore, as we observed in State v. Van Cleave, 674 N.E.2d 1293, 1302 n. 15 (Ind.1996), the Terry doctrine is no longer good law insofar as it is grounded in the federal constitutional guarantee of due process. In 1997, in response to Egelhoff, the legislature enacted Indiana Code section 35-41-2-5. This section provides: Intoxication is not a defense in a prosecution for an offense and may not be taken into consideration in determining the existence of a mental state that is an element of the offense . . . [with exceptions not relevant here]. If this statute is consistent with the state constitution, the instruction in Sanchez's trial properly captured the law of Indiana governing a claim of lack of intent by reason of voluntary intoxication. As explained below, compatibility of the statute with the federal constitution was established in Egelhoff, but the state constitutional issues have not been resolved by this Court.