Court Opinion

ID: 9745100
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 22:34:55.014806+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:24:56.046246
License: Public Domain

DeBRULER, Justice,
concurring and dissenting.
In general, no legal problem arises when a person is charged, tried and sentenced for a substantive offense and a conspiracy to commit the same substantive offense. Chinn v. State (1987), Ind., 511 N.E.2d 1000. Planning to commit a crime and carrying out that plan are separate acts. Conspiracy has been held not to be a lesser and included offense of the substantive offense. Lane v. State (1972), 259 Ind. 468, 288 N.E.2d 258. The offense of conspiracy, I.C. 35-41-5-2, requires an agreement to commit a felony and the performance of an overt act in furtherance of the agreement. The crime of conspiracy poses. distinct dangers apart from and not necessarily confined to the planned substantive offense. Elmore v. State (1978), 269 Ind. 532, 382 N.E.2d 893. Here, however, the agreement to kill was reached in the car after the victim was beaten, and a short while before she was taken from the car and killed in a ditch. The element of conspiracy, as charged, proved and relied upon by the State as the overt act in furtherance of the conspiracy to kill, was the act of abandoning the victim in the ditch.
An accurate discernment by this Court of the intent of the legislature in enacting a statute creating a separate crime of conspiracy is crucial to maintaining the proper application of that statute. Albernaz v. United States, 450 U.S. 333, 101 S.Ct. 1137, 67 L.Ed.2d 275 (1981). It is evident to me that it is not within the intent of the Indiana legislature to separately punish a conspiracy, which occurs during and as part of the actual commission and completion of the substantive offense in the type of compressed time period shown by this evidence, and the substantive offense as well. There is in such instances a total overlap in the proof of both, which is often considered important in determining whether a conspiracy is sufficiently distinguishable from the substantive offense to be separately punished. I would address this issue, although it is not specifically argued, as within the umbrella of appellant's claim that the evidence presented by the State is insufficient to prove the offense of conspir*784acy. The separate conviction and sentence for conspiracy should be reversed. I agree, however, that the conviction and sentence for murder should be affirmed.