Court Opinion

ID: 9518868
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 01:04:00.383448+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:37:33.495961
License: Public Domain

VAIDIK, Judge,
concurring in result.
I concur with the result reached by the majority, but I respectfully disagree with its determination that "an accused is presumed to have obtained the age necessary for a conviction of a crime unless the presumption is challenged through a motion to dismiss and supporting memorandum." Op. at 76. Although the majority cites this rule as established in McGowan, I believe that more recent decisions by our Supreme Court and sound policy considerations support the position that where the offender's age is an element of the crime charged, the State bears the burden to establish age beyond a reasonable doubt.
In Lewis v. State, 511 N.E.2d 1054 (Ind.1987), the defendant challenged his convietion for child molesting under Indiana Code § 85-424-3(c), which at the time required that an offender must have been sixteen years of age or older. Lewis did not file a motion to dismiss at the trial level; rather, he argued on appeal that age was an element of child molesting and that the evidence was insufficient to establish that he was sixteen years of age or older. Our Supreme Court addressed Lewis's argument in its opinion and determined that because a detective on the case testified that Lewis had told him in an interview that he was twenty-five years old and because the local jail's medical screening questionnaire was admitted into evidence, listing Lewis's date of birth as November 14, 1959, the evidence was sufficient to prove that Lewis was over the age of sixteen at the time he committed the charged acts.
In another case, Altmeyer v. State, 519 N.E.2d 138 (Ind.1988), our Supreme Court again addressed this issue in a child molesting case. Again, the defendant did not file a motion to dismiss at trial but instead challenged his conviction on appeal by arguing that the State failed to prove that he was over sixteen years of age at the time of the offense. The Court upheld the judgment against Altmeyer, finding that the circumstantial evidence presented at trial establishing that he was married and had an eleven-year-old son was sufficient to prove the age element of the crime.
Neither of these Indiana Supreme Court cases held that the defendants' arguments were waived by their failure to challenge the age element via a motion to dismiss. Rather, each case appears to have recognized the principle, cited recently by this Court in Davidson v. State, that "[d]efendants have a constitutional guarantee to have every element of their offense proved beyond a reasonable doubt by the State." 825 N.E.2d 414, 420 (Ind.Ct.App.2005) (emphasis added) (citation omitted.) So ingrained is this notion in our jurispru-denee that the Davidson court described it as "the fundamental principle" underlying our system of justice. Id. (citation omitted). I fail to see how this policy -this building block of our criminal justice system-can be so readily cast aside regarding the need to prove an offender's age where age is an element of the crime simply because "age] is often evident." McGowan, 366 N.E.2d at 1165. Inasmuch as age is "often evident," it is also almost *78always easily proven, and when it is an element of the crime charged, it is incumbent upon the State to offer such proof.
Nevertheless, I reach the same conclusion as the majority in this case because I find that the State did prove Staton's age beyond a reasonable doubt. Witness testimony established that at the time of the incident, January 2004, Staton was a freshman living in a dormitory at Manchester College. The fifteen-year-old victim testified that she had known Staton for a number of years, that she "imagined" him to be four years older than she, that it was her "understanding" that he was eighteen in January 2004, and that she thought Staton had graduated from high school in 2008, the year before her older sister. I would find, then, that the State presented sufficient circumstantial evidence to establish that Staton was at least eighteen years of age at the time he committed the charged offense. For this reason, I concur.