Opinion ID: 2087611
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Changing Treatment of Accessories

Text: Several commentators have recommended that criminal liability as an accessory after the fact be treated as a crime of obstruction of justice rather than a crime based on an accomplice theory of criminal liability. See Model Penal Code and Commentaries § 2.06, comment 1 (1985). The current versions of both the Assisting a Criminal statute and the Aiding, Inducing, or Causing statute have abandoned the common law terms of principal and accessory. Even with this change in terminology in the Assisting a Criminal statute, the statute has not been completely divorced from its common law origins, however. Though the statute no longer makes the accessory after the fact guilty of the same crime as the principal, his guilt is still contingent on a finding of the degree of his principal's guilt. Both the internal logic of the statutethat the accessory's criminal liability increases with the principal's criminal liabilityand the practical absurdity of finding an accessory guilty of assisting a person who was found not be a criminal in a trial on the merits militate against such a reading of the statute. Logic alone would seem to require that one cannot be convicted of assisting a criminal if there is no criminal to assist. Unlike the Aiding, Inducing or Causing statute, which explicitly changes the common law rule that a principal must be tried before an accessory, the Assisting a Criminal statute is silent on the issue. Its language still echoes Blackstone's definition of accessory after the fact and the legislature has yet to except it from the common law rule. As this Court has stated, [w]hen the legislature enacts a statute in derogation of the common law, this Court presumes that the legislature is aware of the common law and does not intend to make any change therein beyond what it declares either in express terms or by unmistakable implication. Bartrom v. Adjustment Bureau, Inc. (1993), Ind., 618 N.E.2d 1, 10. Moreover, because it is a penal statute, it is to be strictly construed against the State, with the final objective of determining and effecting the legislative intent. Spangler v. State (1993), Ind., 607 N.E.2d 720, 723. Given the statutory language and the presumed knowledge of the Legislature, the Assisting a Criminal statute therefore has not received explicit exception from the common law rule requiring conviction of the principal before convicting his accessory.