Court Opinion

ID: 9521390
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 02:04:00.444467+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:49:42.645826
License: Public Domain

PRENTICE, Justice,
dissenting.
I dissent from the majority's treatment of Issue I. I agree with the Court of Appeals that the evidence is insufficient to establish beyond a reasonable doubt that Defendant committed the Robbery charged.
This case was tried to the bench. The only issue before the trial court was the identity of the perpetrator of a November 12, 1979 Robbery of Carla Owens at the Speedway service station in Anderson. The testimony of Carla Owens, alone, which is related accurately by the Court of Appeals, 422 N.E.2d at 867, would not be sufficient to sustain the conviction. Lottie v. State, (1974) 262 Ind. 124, 311 N.E.2d 800. The majority admits as much by resort to cumulating the events and evidence in order that they may corroborate one another and in turn imply Defendant's guilt. The facts, which relate to the bandit's identity, are entirely circumstantial and do not corroborate one another.
In addition to Owens' testimony, the State offered the testimony of Lillie Brown and a statement that Brown gave to the police on December 18, 1979. The statement appears at 422 N.E.2d 368-69.
The statement came into evidence under the rule of Patterson v. State, (19745) 263 Ind. 55, 324 N.E.2d 482. While Brown admitted that she gave the statement, she repudiated much of its contents at trial and testified that the police had threatened to charge her as an accomplice and to take her children from her if she did not cooperate. Circumstances such as the threatening of a witness might persuade me to reconsider our decision in Patterson. See Samuels v. State, (1978) 267 Ind. 676, 679, 372 N.E.2d 1186, 1187. Nevertheless, we must credit the statement as substantive evidence. The statement proves at best that at "around the time" of the Speedway station Robbery, which Brown read about in a newspaper, Defendant admitted that he had committed a Robbery. Brown had no knowledge of the Robbery charged until she read about it in the newspaper. The language of her statement proves that she drew the conclusion that the Robbery she read about and the Robbery Defendant had mentioned to her were one and the same.
If Brown had testified in this fashion in court, an objection to relating this conclusion would have been sustained, as the conclusion is a fact that she surmised rather than one that she witnessed. Diehl v. State, (1901) 157 Ind. 549, 571, 62 N.E. 51, 58; Hinshaw v. State, (1897) 147 Ind. 334, 373, 47 N.E. 157, 169. Through the vehicle of an out of court statement, an otherwise inadmissible conclusion of a witness provides the necessary and missing link in the State's case. The Defendant admitted a Robbery, but the State did not produce evidence from which a trier of fact, rather than Lillie Brown, could reasonably infer that it was the Robbery charged that he had admitted.
I find nothing significant in Defendant's possession of small bills He might have obtained them in a "Robbery" he committed, but the bills and his manner of storing them and spending them have no characteristic which links them to the Robbery charged.
I find nothing significant in Defendant's having had access to a dark blue 1978 Chev*15rolet Monte Carlo, which Brown testified had a light blue top. Witness Winkle stated that a man, wearing clothing similar to that described by Owens, entered a dark car, which was not white or red. This evidence permits an inference that Winkle observed the perpetrator of the Robbery during the getaway; however, it does not permit the additional inference that Defendant and the man Winkle observed are one and the same, nor that Winkle observed Brown's automobile.
I also find nothing significant in Defendant's ownership of a hat and army jacket that Owens described as "just like" the ones the bandit wore. There was nothing unusual about this clothing. That Defendant owned both a cap and a jacket implies at best, as the Court of Appeals found, that he had an opportunity to commit the offense charged. See Leavell v. State, (1975) 163 Ind.App. 425, 429, 324 N.E.2d 276, 278 (trans. denied).
The State bore the burden of proving the elements of the offense charged beyond a reasonable doubt. In this case, as in any other case, to meet the burden the State may rely wholly upon circumstantial evidence; however, the evidence at bar reflects at best that Defendant may be a bandit. It could not convince a reasonable trier of fact, beyond a reasonable doubt, that Defendant is the person who robbed Carla Owens of $8200 at the Speedway service station in Anderson on the morning of November 12, 1979 as the information charges. The judgment of the trial court should be reversed and the Defendant ordered discharged.
DeBRULER, J., concurs.