Court Opinion

ID: 9740760
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 20:41:24.133493+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:24:20.164037
License: Public Domain

HOFFMAN, Judge,
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent. Hughey was not discharged until after being convicted of battery. Thus, he was discharged for just cause pursuant to IND.CODE § 22-4-15-1(d)(8) (1992 Supp.). Two cases are relevant to this determination, Holmes v. Review Bd. of Ind. Sec. Div. (1983), Ind.App., 451 N.E.2d 83, and Sparks v. Dept. of Emp. & Training Serv. (1988), Ind.App., 531 N.E.2d 227.
In Holmes, an employee was discharged during incarceration for a charge which was later dismissed, and he was subsequently denied unemployment benefits. Holmes at 84. This Court reversed the denial of benefits holding pre-trial incarceration due to the filing of criminal charges later dismissed is not just cause pursuant to the above subsection. Id. at 88. (Emphasis added.) Because the cause was later dismissed, the Holmes Court found he was "incarcerated due to the lawful act of third parties ... [and] not because of any act or omission he committed"; discharge under these circumstances interfered with his presumption of innocence. Id. at 87.
Holmes was clarified in Sparks. There, an employee was also discharged while being detained in jail following an arrest and thereafter denied benefits. At the hearing to determine whether benefits should be denied, no evidence was presented as to whether a conviction, dismissal or acquittal resulted from the charge. On appeal, in analyzing Holmes, the Sparks Court found the presumption of innocence alluded to earlier in Holmes "fails only upon a conviction or upon a plea of guilty...." Sparks at 228. (Emphasis added.) Accordingly, Hoimes was found to control only if the charges resulted later in a dismissal or acquittal. Sparks at 228-29. Solely because there was no finding by the Review Board of the disposition of the charge, i.e., a conviction, was the case reversed. Id. at 229.
By contrast to the above cases, there was evidence presented here that Hughey was convicted of the charges against him. Unlike the employee in Holmes whose charges were later dismissed, this evidence of conviction conclusively establishes that Hughey was absent from work due to his own volition and not the acts of others. Further, because discharge occurred after conviction, there is no danger to the presumption of innocence as was the case in Holmes. Moreover, consistent with the reasoning in Sparks, because the Review Board already had evidence of incarceration to deny benefits under IND. CODE § 22-4-15-1(d)(8), it only needed evidence of conviction, which it had.
Such a result, in my- opinion, would adequately protect the rights of employees and employers alike and would also preserve the purpose of IND.CODE § 22-4-15(d)(8) which is to allow discharge due to incarceration only where a conviction has been obtained. For the above reasons, I would vote to affirm the decision of the Review Board denying Hughey unemployment benefits.