Castillo v. State , 45S00–1102–LW–110.
| Decision Date | 31 July 2012 |
| Docket Number | No. 45S00–1102–LW–110.,45S00–1102–LW–110. |
| Citation | 974 N.E.2d 458 |
| Parties | Engelica E. CASTILLO, Appellant (Defendant below), v. STATE of Indiana, Appellee (Plaintiff below). |
| Court | Indiana Supreme Court |
OPINION TEXT STARTS HERE
Marce Gonzalez, Jr., Dyer, IN, Attorney for Appellant.
Gregory F. Zoeller, Attorney General of Indiana, James B. Martin, Deputy Attorney General, Indianapolis, IN, Attorneys for Appellee.
Prosecuted for the heinous death of Jada Justice, her two-year-old cousin, Engelica Castillo 1 was convicted of one count of Murder, two counts of class A felony Neglect of a Dependent, one count of class A felony Battery, and one count of class A misdemeanor False Informing. She was sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole for Murder plus a total of five additional years for the other crimes. On direct appeal, she challenges her sentence of life without parole for Murder, asserting two claims: (1) sentence inappropriateness and (2) prosecutorial misconduct during the sentencing phase of her trial. For reasons expressed below, we conclude that the appropriate sentence for this defendant's conviction for Murder is a term of sixty-five (65) years.
The dead body of two-year-old Jada Justice was recovered from a swampy body of water near LaPorte, Indiana, on June 24, 2009. At the time of her death, Jada was staying with her mother's first cousin, Engelica Castillo, and Castillo's then-boyfriend, Timothy J. Tkachik. According to the testimony of Castillo and of Tkachik, Jada died on June 13, 2009, while riding in Tkachik's vehicle or shortly thereafter. The exact cause of death was disputed at trial. Additional facts will be supplied as necessary.
On June 26, 2009, the State charged the defendant and Tkachik each with (1) Murder, a felony under Indiana Code Section 35–42–1–1, (2) two counts of Neglect of a Dependent as a class A felony under Indiana Code Section 35–46–1–4, (3) Battery as a class A felony under Indiana Code Section 35–42–2–1, and (4) False Informing as a class A misdemeanor under Indiana Code Section 35–44–2–2. On September 18, 2009, the State amended the charges against the defendant, reducing the Battery count to a class D felony and requesting that a sentence of life without the possibility of parole be imposed on the defendant for the Murder charge based on the fact that the victim was less than 12 years of age at the time of her death.2Tkachik entered into a plea agreement with the State on June 21, 2010, whereby he pled guilty to two counts of class A felony Neglect of a Dependent and agreed to cooperate in the defendant's prosecution and testify against her at trial. In exchange, the State agreed to dismiss the counts charging Tkachik with Murder, class A felony Battery, and False Informing and agreed to request a sentence of no more than 50 years for each count with any sentences to be served concurrently.3 The defendant, Castillo, was tried before a jury and found guilty on all counts. At the sentencing phase of her trial, the jury recommended a sentence of life without the possibility of parole. Accordingly, the trial court sentenced the defendant to the Indiana Department of Corrections for life without the possibility of parole for the count of Murder, for an additional two years for each count of Neglect of a Dependent, and for an additional one year for the count of False Informing. The count of Battery was vacated. All sentences were ordered to be served consecutively. The defendant then filed this direct appeal on October 12, 2010.4
The defendant first contends that her sentence for Murder—life imprisonment without the possibility of parole—is inappropriate in light of the maximum possible sentence—fifty-years' imprisonment—faced by her codefendant, Tkachik, as a result of his plea agreement.
The Indiana Constitution grants this Court “in all appeals of criminal cases, the power to review all questions of law and to review and revise the sentence imposed.” Ind. Const. art. 7, § 4. We may exercise this power even where the trial court has acted within its lawful discretion. 5Buchanan v. State, 767 N.E.2d 967, 972 (Ind.2002). This power “reserv[es] for the appellate court the chance to review the matter in a climate more distant from local clamor.” Serino v. State, 798 N.E.2d 852, 856–57 (Ind.2003). We have chosen to implement this constitutional power using Indiana Appellate Rule 7(B). Childress v. State, 848 N.E.2d 1073, 1079 (Ind.2006); Buchanan, 767 N.E.2d at 972–73. This rule provides that “[t]he Court may revise a sentence authorized by statute if, after due consideration of the trial court's decision, the Court finds that the sentence is inappropriate in light of the nature of the offense and the character of the offender.” App. R. 7(B).
It is the nature of the offense, not the character of the defendant, which provides the strongest consideration in favor of revising the defendant's sentence in this case. At trial, the jury was only presented with two possible grounds on which it could convict the defendant of Murder: (1) that the defendant knowingly or intentionally killed the victim or (2) that the defendant aided, induced, or caused the commission of Murder by another, namely the defendant's boyfriend.6 Of these two alternative grounds, we find that the evidence was insufficient for a reasonable jury to conclude that the defendant knowingly or intentionally killed the victim but that it was sufficient for the jury to find her guilty as an accomplice.7
With respect to the nature of the crime, the evidence most favorable to the defendant's sentence reveals the following: At the time of the events leading to this case, the victim was staying with the defendant and the defendant's boyfriend at their home. The victim was scheduled to stay there from June 8 through June 21 of 2009. The first few days of the victim's visit were relatively unremarkable. On the morning of June 12, the defendant and her boyfriend discovered that the victim had taken a packet of powdered Hawaiian Punch mix and strawberries out of their refrigerator without asking their permission. The defendant responded by yelling at and spanking the victim and then wrapping twine around the refrigerator later in the day. The defendant's boyfriend, who was present during nearly all of the events in question, testified that the rest of that day was uneventful. The next morning, on June 13, the defendant discovered that the victim had locked herself in her bedroom. After unlocking the door, the defendant found that the victim had made a mess on the bedroom floor with syrup and powdered Hawaiian Punch packets that the victim had found in the kitchen. Again, the defendant yelled at and spanked the victim and then cleaned up the mess, pushing the victim aside roughly as she cleaned.
Later in the day, around lunchtime, the defendant gave the victim a pre-packaged lunch to eat. The victim did not eat much of it, mostly playing with the food and throwing pieces of it to the dog. This made the defendant angry. As punishment, the defendant put the victim in a corner in the victim's bedroom and then, after cleaning the mess in the kitchen, sat on the couch with her boyfriend in the living room. The defendant could see the victim in her bedroom from the couch and, soon after sitting, noticed that the victim was no longer standing but instead sitting down in the corner and playing with toys. The defendant then returned to the bedroom, spanked the victim, and attempted to force her to stand upright by yanking her and holding her upright by her arms. The defendant then went back to the living room and again sat on the couch. Approximately five minutes later, the defendant again became irritated with the victim and returned to the bedroom. The facts are not clear as to what exactly occurred during this confrontation, but the defendant's boyfriend testified that he could hear the defendant speaking in an irritated tone to the victim when the door was closed and that, at one point when the door was open, he saw the defendant holding the victim by the hair, poking her in the body, and slapping her. At one point during this confrontation, the defendant brought the victim into the living room and, with her boyfriend's help, spanked the victim several times on her bare bottom using a belt. Approximately one and one-half hours after this confrontation began, the defendant came out of the victim's bedroom and told her boyfriend that the victim had hit her head on a table in the bedroom when the defendant had slapped her. The boyfriend testified that the victim sustained a small cut above her right eye that bled only a small amount and that the defendant put a small bandage over it. He also testified that he noticed red marks on the victim's face and bruises on her buttocks around that same time.
Shortly after the victim hit her head, the defendant's boyfriend became frustrated by the ongoing confrontation between the victim and the defendant. He ran into the victim's bedroom and “knuckled” the victim in the head “pretty hard” four to six times “hoping that everything would stop after that.” Tr. at 334–35. Afterward, the defendant continued to hold the victim by the hair, yanking and pushing her, and eventually tied the victim to a chair with her boyfriend's belts. She initially placed one belt around the victim's waist and another around her neck but removed the belt from around the victim's neck after her boyfriend told her to do so. Still frustrated with the situation, the defendant's boyfriend then went to the gas station. When he arrived home, he heard “boom, boom, boom, boom” coming from the victim's bedroom, but he couldn't see what was causing the noise because the bedroom door was shut. Tr. at 341. He then made plans to go to Chicago that evening to purchase heroin.
Approximately thirty minutes later, the defendant and her boyfriend left for...
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