Court Opinion

ID: 9736633
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 19:01:32.971819+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:27:07.787862
License: Public Domain

CRONE, Judge,
concurring as to Issue I and concurring in result as to Issue II.
I fully concur with the majority’s resolution of Issue I. With respect to Issue II, however, I respectfully disagree with the majority’s determination that the trial *473court’s instruction on pointing a handgun correctly states the law.
As Judge Sullivan stated in Brown, Indiana Code Section 35-47-4-3 is “poorly drafted” and “subject to differing constructions.” 790 N.E.2d at 1066 (Sullivan, J., concurring in part). I do not believe, however, that the statute may be construed so as to make “the matter of an unloaded firearm an affirmative defense upon which the defendant bears the burden of proof.” Id.
“An affirmative defense admits all the elements of the crime but proves circumstances which excuse the defendant from culpability.” Melendez v. State, 511 N.E.2d 454, 457 (Ind.1987). Two common affirmative defenses are self-defense and entrapment. See Moon v. State, 823 N.E.2d 710, 716 (Ind.Ct.App.2005) (“Self-defense ... and entrapment ... both are defenses of justification, admitting that the facts of the crime occurred but contending that the acts were justified. As such, these defenses negate no element of the crime.”) (citation omitted), trans. denied. In Brown, the court properly concluded that the matter of a loaded firearm is not an element of class D felony pointing a firearm. See Brown, 790 N.E.2d at 1064 (“[T]he statutory language indicates a clear intent that the State is not required to prove that a firearm was loaded in order to obtain a conviction for pointing a firearm as a class D felony.”). Thus, a defendant who claims that his firearm was unloaded is not attempting to negate an element of the crime, but rather to prove a mitigating factor that reduces, but not wholly excuses, his culpability.
In this sense, the matter of an unloaded firearm is akin to sudden heat, which “is a mitigating factor that reduces otherwise murderous conduct to voluntary manslaughter, but is not an element of voluntary manslaughter.” Boone v. State, 728 N.E.2d 135, 138 (Ind.2000) (footnote omitted). As our supreme court explained in Finch v. State,
While it is plainly the State’s burden to prove the existence of each element of a crime by substantial evidence beyond a reasonable doubt, it is not the State’s burden to prove the existence of a mitigating factor, such as the presence of sudden heat. Rather, the defendant must prove the existence of sudden heat in order to reduce murder to voluntary manslaughter.[3] The introduction of the issue of sudden heat into the case places a burden on the State to negate the defense beyond a reasonable doubt and calls for an instruction on the lesser included offense of voluntary manslaughter. The trier of fact must then resolve the question of whether a defendant acted under sudden heat.
510 N.E.2d 673, 675 (Ind.1987) (citations omitted). I believe that the same procedure should be followed with respect to the matter of an unloaded firearm and that the jury should be instructed accordingly.
Although the jury was not so instructed in this case, I agree with the majority that any error was harmless in this case. Therefore, I concur in result as to Issue II.

. The defendant need not establish the existence of sudden heat by a preponderance of the evidence. See Trueblood v. State, 715 N.E.2d 1242, 1249 (Ind.1999) (“Although the State has the burden of disproving sudden heat beyond a reasonable doubt, in order to inject that issue at all, the defendant must point to some evidence supporting sudden heat.”) (emphasis added), cert. denied (2000).