Court Opinion

ID: 9732696
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 16:31:45.796965+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:26:31.629958
License: Public Domain

SHEPARD,
Chief Justice, concurring in part and dissenting in part.
I cannot agree that the evidence is sufficient to support Parks’ battery conviction. Police officer Grose grabbed Parks around *173the neck, wrestled him to the ground and handcuffed him. While doing so, Grose suffered some cuts and scrapes on his left hand. He testified he did not know what caused them. The State cites this evidence as proof of battery.
A battery is something more than an inadvertent injury caused by a struggle during arrest. The law requires proof of an act of striking by the defendant. Mere body contact has not been regarded as sufficient. Illustrative of this rule are cases like Pier v. State (1983), Ind.App., 446 N.E.2d 985, in which a deputy was searching the defendant when the latter spun free and struck the officer on the temple. The Court of Appeals held the evidence sufficient to support a battery.
In support of its position in this case, the State cites Tapp v. State (1980), Ind.App., 406 N.E.2d 296. In Tapp, however, the defendant bit the arresting officer three times during a struggle. That evidence was sufficient to prove battery.
In each of those instances the evidence consisted of something more than the cuts and scrapes Grose suffered when he arrested Parks. While injury would support enhancement of the offense to a felony, the statute still requires evidence of an affirmative touching (such as the blow or the bite) to support a battery conviction.
It is this act of touching or striking which distinguishes battery, Ind.Code § 35-42-2-1, from resisting law enforcement, Ind.Code § 35-44-3-3, under which one who forcibly resists an officer and in doing so inflicts bodily injury commits a class D felony. Evidence that a police officer who initiated the contact to make an arrest came out of an ensuing struggle with an injury from an unknown source is altogether adequate to prove the offense of resisting law enforcement. To prove battery, the evidence must show that the defendant struck the officer in some way.
In short, I think Parks was simply mis-charged and thus dissent from the decision to affirm the battery conviction. In all other respects, I concur in the court’s decision.