Court Opinion

ID: 9716527
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 06:42:55.987474+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:23:46.507235
License: Public Domain

*638DeBRULER, Justice,
concurring and dissenting.
I concur in affirming appellant's convietion, but would remand the case to the trial court to modify the sentence by imposing an eight-year sentence, or to conduct other consistent proceedings.
There is validity to appellant's second appellate claim that the evidence was insufficient to prove that he had accumulated two prior unrelated felony convictions. Appellant was tried upon the charge that he had sexual intercourse with his daughter on "Monday or Wednesday in September, 1985." The court permitted the daughter to testify at the trial on such charge that appellant had had sexual contact with her, including intercourse, periodically since 1981. The jury did not receive an instruction on the limited purpose of this evidence of other separate and distinct crimes, and the jury returned a general verdict of guilty.
The time of the commission of the charged offense was not of the essence at the trial on guilt or innocence; however, at the habitual offender stage of the trial, the time of the commission of the charged offense was of the essence because it was the burden of the prosecution to prove at such habitual offender stage that the commission of the charged offense, here child molesting, occurred after appellant's most recent sentence for theft in 1985. More-dock v. State (1987), Ind., 514 N.E.2d 1247. In the absence of an express incorporation of the trial evidence at the habitual offender stage, either upon motion of the prosecutor or upon the court's own motion, there is simply insufficient basis in the record upon which to conclude that the required and discrete determination of the proper time relationship, between the commission of the charged offense and his most recent sentence upon a conviction for theft, was made by the jury. It does not appear that the jury was called to the task of determining the date of the commission of the charged offense, but was left instead to base its habitual offender determination simply upon the general verdict of guilty and the proof of prior convictions. Under these circumstances, I would set aside the habitual offender determination.