Court Opinion

ID: 9712381
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 04:52:37.325502+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:23:11.740049
License: Public Domain

RILEY, Judge,
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent from the majority's conclusion that the trial court did not err in moving Tipton's habitual offender sentence enhancement from Count 2 to Count 1 in the course of resentencing.
As the majority states, Tipton primarily relies on Coble v. State, 523 N.E.2d 228 (Ind.1988), in which our supreme court found that "Appellant's sentence of two (2) years on Count I was not directly affected by the habitual offender status. It was a final judgment not subject to change upon remand." With this in mind, Tipton ar-
*191gues that the trial court erred when it resentenced him on a count that remained unaffected by post-conviction relief. Tip-ton maintains that the trial court did not have the authority to move the habitual offender enhancement to Count 1, because Count 1 was a final judgment not subject to change upon resentencing.
On the other hand, the State cites to Greer v. State, 680 N.E.2d 526, 527-528 (Ind.1997), in which our supreme court ultimately determined:
We decline to interpret Coble (II) to prevent the repositioning of the habitual offender enhancement when a defendant appeals from a judgment imposing multiple felony convictions and obtains a reversal of the conviction enhanced by a habitual offender finding. The trial court on remand was not prohibited from revising the sentence for the surviving felony conviction to reflect the habitual offender enhancement.
Similarly, in McCormick v. State, 262 Ind. 303, 307, 317 N.E.2d 428, 429 (1974), our supreme court reversed one of two felony convictions and repositioned the habitual offender enhancement upon the affirmed conviction, rejecting the defendant's request to vacate the habitual offender finding because it was originally "coupled" with the count subsequently vacated.
I cannot agree with the State's likening of Greer and McCormick to the instant case. In both of those cases, the habitual offender enhancement was repositioned because the felony to which it had previously been attached no longer existed. Thus, the move was necessary. However, here, the felony to which the habitual offender enhancement was attached was not reversed, vacated, or changed from a felony to a misdemeanor. Count 2 remained intact as a felony.
Ind.Code § 35-50-2-8, in pertinent part, provides:
(a) Except as otherwise provided in this section, the state may seek to have a person sentenced as a habitual offender for any felony by alleging, on a page separate from the rest of the charging instrument, that the person has accumulated two (2) prior unrelated felony convictions.
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(h) The court shall sentence a person found to be a habitual offender to an additional fixed term that is not less than the presumptive sentence for the underlying offense nor more than three (3) times the presumptive sentence for the underlying offense. However, the additional sentence may not exceed thirty (80) years.
Additionally, Ind.Code § 85-50-2-5 provides:
A person who commits a Class B felony shall be imprisoned for a fixed term of ten (10) years, with not more than ten (10) years added for aggravating cireum-stances or not more than four (4) years subtracted for mitigating cireumstances; in addition, he may be fined not more than ten thousand dollars ($10,000).
Furthermore, Ind.Code § 85-50-2-7(a) provides:
A person who commits a Class D felony shall be imprisoned for a fixed term of one and one-half (1%) years, with not more than one and one-half (1%) years added for aggravating cireumstances or not more than one (1) year subtracted for mitigating cireumstances. In addition, he may be fined not more than ten thousand dollars ($10,000).
It is clear that the trial court, on resen-tencing, only moved Tipton's habitual offender enhancement because it would have been attached to a Class D felony. Had the enhancement remained on the Class D *192felony, the trial court could not sentence Tipton to more than four and one-half (444) years in addition to the three (8) years he received on Count 2. Seemingly, this was unacceptable to the trial court.
On November 1, 1994, Tipton was sentenced to fifteen (15) years on Count 1. On resentencing, Tipton was sentenced to fifteen (15) years, enhanced by ten (10) years due to his status as an habitual offender, for a total of twenty-five (25) years on Count 1. As previously stated, Count 1 was unaffected by the trial court's grant of Tipton's petition for post-conviction relief. While it is true that one's habitual offender status is not linked to any particular conviction, it was originally attached to Count 2. See Greer, 680 N.E.2d at 527. Count 2, though changed from a Class C felony to a Class D felony, has always remained a felony. Thus, there was nothing that necessitated a repositioning of the habitual offender enhancement as it did Greer and McCormick. Consequently, I would find that Count 1 was a final judgment not subject to change upon remand. See Coble, 528 N.E.2d at 228. Therefore, it would be my determination that the trial court's reliance on (Greer was misplaced.