Court Opinion

ID: 9732807
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 16:36:27.441888+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:26:34.017335
License: Public Domain

DICKSON, Justice,
concurring and dissenting.
I respectfully dissent withlrespect to Issue IV.
The form of verdict provided to the jury during the habitual offender phase was inadequate. It failed to recognize the jury's right to find that the defendant was not a habitual offender at this time, even though there may have been adequate proof of the prerequisite prior felony convictions. Mers v. State (1986), Ind., 496 N.E.2d 75; Baker v. Duckworth (Ith Cir. 1985), 752 F.2d 302, 306 cert denied, -- U.8. --, 105 S.Ct. 8488, 87 L.Ed.2d 618. This Court recently stated:
While the habitual offender phase of the proceeding focuses upon the existence of two prior unrelated felony convictions, prerequisite to this phase is a conviction for the primary underlying felony. A person cannot be found to be a habitual offender upon merely two felony convictions. There must be three. It is from this group of three particular convictions that a jury may determine the "ultimate issue of fact"-whether, based on these three felonies, defendant's sentencing status should be that of a habitual offender.
Mers, supra, 496 N.E.2d at 79.
If the legislature had intended merely that the fact of two prior unrelated felony convictions should operate to automatically, without exception, compel the habitual offender sentencing status and resulting substantial increase in term of imprisonment, it would not have been necessary to allow for the intervention of a jury. For example, mandatory consecutive sentences are required by Ind.Code § 35-50-1-2 in the event of a certain specified conviction history. The statute does not require such matters to be presented for jury evaluation.
In contrast, by permitting a jury determination of habitual offender status, the legislature elected against making the habitual offender determination to be an automatic, inevitable result of a conviction following two prior unrelated convictions. The Constitution of Indiana, Article 1, Sec. 19, provides, "[iJn all criminal cases whatever, the jury shall have the right to determine the law and the facts." Within this framework, the legislature chose to empower a jury to make the determination of whether a defendant's sentencing status is to be that of a habitual offender.
The form of verdict utilized by the trial court prevented the jury from discharging its proper function under the statutes and Constitution of Indiana.
I concur with the majority opinion on all remaining issues, and would. remand for a new habitual offender proceeding.
SHEPARD, J., concurs.