Court Opinion

ID: 9740546
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 20:37:01.913301+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:24:18.760370
License: Public Domain

SULLIVAN, Judge,
dissenting.
The restitution ordered in this case was tied specifically and exclusively to the conviction for perjury. The perjury for which Myers was convicted was for lying “about disposition of the funds” which he had misappropriated. The misappropriation itself was the subject matter of the theft charge which was dismissed as a part of the plea bargain.
I do not read the plea bargain as does the majority. In other words, I do not see that it provides that “Myers would pay restitution for perjury as well as the theft charge.” Op. at 1109. Rather the plea agreement covered “Restitution as appropriate.” App. at 24.
I do not view that restitution for the perjury is “appropriate.” The funds for which Myers was ordered to make restitution were not lost to the estate by Myers’s lying about his disposition of those funds. Rather they were lost by reason of the misappropriation itself.
It is well established that restitution may be ordered only where the injury, harm or loss is “a direct and immediate result” of the criminal act. Reinbold v. State, 555 N.E.2d 463, 470 (Ind.1990), overruled on other grounds by Wright v. State, 658 N.E.2d 563, 570 (Ind.1995) (emphasis supplied); Martin v. State, 784 N.E.2d 997, 1014 (Ind.Ct.App.2003); Utley v. State, 699 N.E.2d 723, 729 (Ind.Ct.App.1998), trans. denied.
The loss to the estate here was not a direct and immediate result of Myers’s perjury. I would reverse and remand with instructions to vacate the restitution order.