Opinion ID: 1918397
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: whether the trial court erred in granting the state's oral motion to amend the indictment.

Text: ¶ 8. The legislature has mandated that an indictment may be changed as to form, but not as to the substance of the offense charged. Miss.Code Ann. § 99-17-13(1994). The original indictment here read in pertinent part as follows: ... Mark Chevalier did willfully, unlawfully, feloniously, and without lawful authority for doing so and against the will of Karen B. Chevalier forcibly seize and kidnap the said Karen B. Chevalier, a human being, with the intent to cause the said Karen B. Chevalier to be secretly confined and held against her will, contrary to and in violation of Section 97-3-53 of the Mississippi Code of 1972 as-amended. The State amended this indictment after the trial began by omitting the word secretly. Chevalier maintains that this amendment is substantive and is thus prohibited by § 99-17-13. The State asserts that the amendment is permissible, because it only amends the form of the indictment. ¶ 9. It is fundamental that courts may amend indictments only to correct defects of form, however, defects of substance must be corrected by the grand jury. Rhymes v. State, 638 So.2d 1270, 1275 (Miss. 1994). The State asserts that the amendment was not substantive, because including the word secretly in the indictment was mere surplusage, since secretly confining is not a necessary element of kidnapping. Miss.Code Ann. § 97-3-53 (1994). We disagree. The test of whether an accused is prejudiced by the amendment of an indictment or information has been said to be whether or not a defense under the indictment or information as it originally stood would be equally available after the amendment is made and whether or not any evidence [the] accused might have would be equally applicable to the indictment or information in the one form as in the other; if the answer is in the affirmative, the amendment is one of form and not of substance. Medina v. State, 688 So.2d 727, 730 (Miss. 1996) ( quoting Griffin v. State, 540 So.2d 17, 21 (Miss.1989) ( quoting Reed v. State, 506 So.2d 277, 279 (Miss.1987))). The purpose of this rule is to protect the rights of the defendant by preventing unfair surprise after he has diligently prepared his defense strategy. See URCCC 7.09. The issue here is not the sufficiency of the indictment, but whether amending the indictment compromised the defendant's rights by prejudicing his defense. Due Process requires the State to prove each element of the offense charged in the indictment beyond a reasonable doubt. Hennington v. State, 702 So.2d 403, 408 (Miss.1997). Once the prosecution made the decision to include the element of secretly confined in Chevalier's indictment, it was constrained to prove that element beyond a reasonable doubt. Removing the word secretly from the indictment deleted an element of the offense charged, and in the process omitted one of the defenses otherwise available to Chevalier. Review of the trial transcript reveals that part of Chevalier's trial strategy was to present evidence that his wife was not secretly confined. During cross-examination, his wife admitted that none of the places where Chevalier took her were secret places. It was after this testimony that the prosecution made its motion to amend the indictment. Deleting the element of secretly confined from the indictment was a substantive change, and could only have been made by the grand jury. ¶ 10. The trial court committed reversible error by allowing the prosecution to circumvent the grand jury by amending the indictment in this case. We are therefore compelled to reverse Chevalier's conviction for kidnapping and thirty-year sentence and remand this case to the Jefferson Davis County Circuit Court for further proceedings.