Opinion ID: 853128
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Actual Evidence, or Same Facts, Test Under Richardson

Text: Although the actual evidence test has acquired that sobriquet, in my view it could also have been accurately described as a same facts test. Richardson described it as a reasonable possibility that the evidentiary facts used by the fact-finder to establish the essential elements of one offense may also have been used to establish the essential elements of a second challenged offense. 717 N.E.2d at 53. Thus, to prevail under that test, Richardson taught that Guyton must demonstrate a reasonable possibility that the same evidentiary facts used by the jury to establish the essential elements of the murder charge were also used to establish the essential elements of the handgun offense. And, as we recently noted in Spivey v. State, 761 N.E.2d 831 (Ind.2002), the use of facts establishing one crime to establish a second means all, not just some, of the evidentiary facts establishing one are included among the evidentiary facts establishing the other. By evidentiary fact, I take Richardson to mean the events found to have occurred, without regard to their legal consequences and independent of the terms lawyers and judges may use to describe them or the legal results these facts produce. Some might prefer the simple term fact, or historical fact or event or circumstance. The Court today uses the very same act. By that term, I think the Court also means the same thing as same fact in its embrace of the Sullivan rules. But using the term same act is problematic because it limits review of the facts to what the defendant did. Some elements of crimes are the consequences or circumstances of the crimes. Thus the same acte.g., burning down a buildingcan result in conviction of two murders if there are two victims. Cf. Burnett v. State, 736 N.E.2d 259, 263 n. 3 (no double jeopardy where there are multiple victims). For this reason I believe it is more useful to use fact rather than act to describe the overlap that precludes conviction for two crimes. Finally, Richardson refers to essential elements. Because proof of all elements of a crime is essential to conviction, I use elements interchangeably with essential elements. I understand that Richardson's majority intended the latter term to include not only statutory elements, but also the elements as charged. Thus, although the statutory elements of a felony murder are killing in the course of a felony, if the charging instrument alleges killing in the course of a robbery on June 13, 1999, these then are among the essential elements as charged. It is in this sense that I use the term elements to mean what needs to be proven to satisfy the statute and the charging instrument.