Court Opinion

ID: 9714865
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 05:47:17.459809+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:23:29.071142
License: Public Domain

GARRARD, Judge,
dissenting.
While I concur in the disposition of the other issues, I dissent to the determination that reversible error was not committed when the court refused to give Aschliman's tendered instruction on criminal conversion as a lesser included offense.
As the majority points out, the distinction between that offense and the crime of theft with which Aschliman was charged and convicted is the intent to deprive the owner of the value or use of the property required by the theft statute. See 1.0. 35-48-4-2 and 8.
In the first step of analysis the majority concludes, and I agree, that conversion is a necessarily included offense because one cannot commit the crime of theft without necessarily committing all the elements of conversion. Having said that, it then appears to me that the majority's later reference to the prosecutor's choice of language in drafting the information is superfluous and potentially misleading. That line of analysis, which emanates from Jones v. State (1982), Ind., 438 N.E.2d 972 can logically only have application to instances where a lesser offense is not inherently (i.e., necessarily) included but may nevertheless become factually included because of the facts alleged by the state in the charging information. An example of the latter situation would occur where one of the forms of battery becomes a lesser offense to robbery because its elements are factually alleged in the robbery information.
Where, however, the lesser offense is inherently included in the greater, the prosecutor cannot avoid charging it in the information. Without unnecessarily belaboring what is a nonissue in this case, it seems to me that this distinction should be clearly drawn regarding the first step analysis. To hold that because the prosecutor included in the information an allegation of the element which distinguishes the greater from the inherently included lesser offense he excluded the lesser offense from consideration, is to hold that the defendant will never be entitled to an instruction on any inherently included lesser offense. Of course, the prosecutor intends to charge the greater offense. That is the purpose of the information: to charge the most serious offense to which the state believes the defendant should be held to answer. But by definition when the state does so, it has also charged all inherently included lesser offenses. Thus, our review must then shift to the second step of the analysis because the first step is conclusively answered.
Under the second step we are to determine whether, under the evidence adduced at trial, the jury might reasonably determine that the lesser offense was committed while the greater one was not. The purpose of this review is to deter compromise verdicts. Thus, concern then focuses upon the element that distinguishes the greater from the lesser offenses. If that element was indisputably established by the evidence, a lesser offense instruction should be refused.
It seems to me that the next question for appellate review thus becomes: By what standard should we judge the sufficiency of the disputed nature of that distinguishing element? - Indiana decisions supply some variations in the words employed, probably because the choice of term is not critical to the outcome in many of the cases. See, e.g. Owens v. State (1989) Ind., 544 N.E.2d 1375 (evidence of distinguishing *768element "compelling and without serious conflict"); Gordon v. State (1986) Ind., 499 N.E.2d 228 (evidence of distinguishing element "clear"); Wolfe v. State (1978), 270 Ind. 81, 383 N.E.2d 317 (whether there was evidence to which the included offense instruction was applicable); Roddy v. State (1979), 182 Ind.App. 156, 394 N.E.2d 1098, 1111 (when there is any evidence of probative value, or a reasonable inference therefrom that the defendant did not commit the distinguishing element).
In Beck v. Alabama (1980) 447 U.S. 625, 100 S.Ct. 2382, 65 LEd.2d 392, the Supreme Court considered Alabama's refusal to instruct on felony murder which did not carry the death penalty as a lesser included offense in a death penalty murder case. In reversing, the Court quoted with approval from its earlier decision in Keeble v. United States (1978), 412 U.S. 205, 208, 93 S.Ct. 1993, 1995, 36 L.Ed.2d 844:
Moreover, it is no answer to a petitioner's demand for a jury instruction on a lesser offense to argue that a defendant may be better off without such an instruction. True, if the prosecution has not established beyond a reasonable doubt every element of the offense charged, and if no lesser offense instruction is offered, the jury must, as a theoretical matter, return a verdict of acquit tal. But a defendant is entitled to a lesser offense instruction-in this context or any other-precisely because he should not be exposed to the substantial risk that the jury's practice will diverge from theory. Where one of the elements of the offense charged remains in doubt, but the defendant is plainly guilty of some offense, the jury is likely to resolve its doubts in favor of conviction.
Thus, the Beck Court determined that providing the jury with the "third option" of convicting on a lesser included offense ensures that the jury will accord the defendant the full benefit of the reasonable doubt standard.
While in Beck the Court expressly limit ed its decision to death penalty determinations, its reasoning underscores the concern for included offense instructions when they are appropriate to the facts in evidence.
The drafters of the Model Penal Code provided that the court should not be obligated to charge the jury with respect to an included offense "unless there is a rational basis for a verdict acquitting the defendant of the offense charged and convicting him of the included offense." ALI, Model Penal Code, § 1.07(5). It appears to me that this terminology captures the essence of our decisions, with the caveat that in close cases the jury is the constitutionally empowered body to determine the facts and is to do so beyond a reasonable doubt.
Turning to Aschliman's appeal, the facts disclose that he took a pry bar from the shed and then used it to attempt to pry open the door and enter the house. He clearly exerted unauthorized control of the pry bar since he used it without permission. When he was apparently frightened away from this endeavor, he discarded the pry bar by throwing it into the grass by an evergreen tree near the sidewalk.
I do not disagree with the majority's conclusion that this evidence would support a verdict of theft. It did not, however, so clearly establish his intent to deprive as to leave no rational basis for the jury to determine that he merely intended the unauthorized use of conversion had they been given the opportunity to do so. Had Aschliman carried the bar away with him and discarded it in some manner so that it would not likely be found be the owner, as by throwing it in a ditch or even leaving it by the road some distance away, there would, I agree, be no rational basis for saying that he did not intend to deprive the owner of the bar within the meaning of the theft statute, even though he did not wish to sell or keep the bar. On the facts before us, however, I must conclude that the court committed error by refusing the instruction.
I would reverse the conviction and remand for a new trial.