Maddex v. State Of Ind.
| Decision Date | 08 July 2010 |
| Docket Number | Cause No. 39D01-0809-FC-395,No. 39A01-0910-CR-496,39A01-0910-CR-496 |
| Parties | RUSSELL W. MADDEX, Appellant-Defendant, v. STATE OF INDIANA, Appellee-Plaintiff. |
| Court | Indiana Appellate Court |
ATTORNEY FOR APPELLANT: R. PATRICK MAGRATH Madison, Indiana
ATTORNEYS FOR APPELLEE: GREGORY F. ZOELLER Attorney General of Indiana Indianapolis, Indiana ARTURO RODRIGUEZ II Deputy Attorney General Indianapolis, Indiana
Pursuant to Ind.Appellate Rule 65(D), this Memorandum Decision shall not be regarded as precedent or cited before any court except for the purpose of establishing the defense of res judicata, collateral estoppel, or the law of the case.
APPEAL FROM THE JEFFERSON SUPERIOR COURT
The Honorable Alison T. Frazier, Judge
Appellant Russell W. Maddex appeals his convictions and sentences for burglary as a class C felony, 1 attempted theft as a class D felony, 2 and for being a habitual offender. We affirm.
Maddex raises five issues for review, which we restate as:
I. Whether the trial court abused its discretion by denying Maddex's motion to dismiss;
II. Whether the State suppressed evidence favorable to Maddex, thereby depriving him of due process;
III. Whether the evidence is sufficient to sustain Maddex's burglary conviction;
IV. Whether the trial court abused its discretion by instructing the jury on accomplice liability; and
V. Whether Maddex's sentence is inappropriate in light of the nature of the offense and the character of the offender.
On the night of September 7, 2008, Officer Jonathon Simpson of the Madison Police Department was dispatched to the Dollar General Store ("the Store") in Madison. The police had received a report of an alarm activating in the Store. Officer Simpsonarrived at the Store, checked the front door, and walked along the north side of the building.
As Officer Simpson walked along the north side of the Store, he heard a humming or drilling sound coming from inside the Store. Officer Simpson tried to open a door on that side of the building, but the door was locked. Furthermore, the humming or drilling sound stopped after Officer Simpson tried to open the door. He walked around to the front of the Store and looked into a window, and when he saw nothing out of the ordinary he returned to where he had heard the humming or drilling sound. At that point, Officer Simpson saw a person on the Store's roof, which is flat and surrounded by a short wall. Officer Simpson climbed onto a dumpster and turned on a flashlight to get a better view, and he saw that the person was Maddex. At that point, Officer Simpson could not see the roof itself due to the short wall, but Maddex appeared to be climbing out of a hole. Maddex ignored Officer Simpson's demands to halt and moved away from him on the roof, heading south. The Store's south wall is contiguous with a neighboring building, known as the United Way Building. The side and the roof of the United Way Building are accessible from the Store's roof.
At that point, Officer Simpson advised dispatch that there was a man on the Store's roof, got down from the dumpster, and moved around the outside of the Store so that he would see if anyone one jumped off of the roof. Other police officers arrived and set up a perimeter around the Store and the United Way Building. Reserve Sheriff's Deputy John Schoenstein was one of the responding officers. He was also a volunteer firefighter and, pursuant to the Sheriff Department's request, arrived at the Store in a firetruck with a moveable aerial platform. Reserve Deputy Schoenstein extended the aerial platform, looked onto the Store's roof, and saw a person lying on the roof. Officer Simpson joined Reserve Deputy Schoenstein on the platform, and the two men used the platform to get onto the Store's roof. They arrested the person on the roof, who was identified as Steven Perry.
At that point, Officer Simpson saw that a hole had been cut in the Store's roof. A ladder was sticking out of the hole, providing access to the Store, and tools and bags were scattered on the roof around the hole. He also noticed that siding on the United Way Building had been torn off, and there was a hole in the side of that building.
Meanwhile, Captain Dave Stidham of the Madison Police Department had arrived on the scene and was watching the front of the United Way Building. As he looked towards a window, Captain Stidham saw something fall through the ceiling inside the building. Captain Stidham walked up to a window, and when he looked inside he saw a person get up and move away. Captain Stidham tried to watch as the person moved through the building but lost track of the person. Eventually, Captain Stidham and several other officers broke a window and entered the building. The officers moved through the building and came to a janitor's closet, where another hole had been torn in the ceiling. An officer demanded that whoever was in the ceiling come down. Maddex climbed down and was taken into custody.
Back at the Store, after Perry was arrested Officer Simpson and other officers entered the Store. They determined that no one else was in the Store. In the Store's office, an alarm system and a security camera had been damaged and someone hadattempted to cut open a safe. The officers found more tools in the office. Peggy Jester, a manager of the Store, came to the Store to view the damage and to review the surveillance camera's recordings.
The State charged Maddex with burglary as a class C felony, theft as a class D felony, and with being a habitual offender.3 The State later amended the theft charge to attempted theft as a class D felony. Prior to trial, Maddex filed a motion to dismiss. The trial court held a hearing on the motion on the day before trial and denied Maddex's motion after the hearing.
The case went to trial, and a jury convicted Maddex of burglary and attempted theft. Subsequently, Maddex pleaded guilty to being a habitual offender. The trial court sentenced Maddex to an aggregate sentence of fourteen (14) years.
We review a trial court's denial of a motion to dismiss for an abuse of discretion. Johnson v. State, 774 N.E.2d 1012, 1014 (Ind. Ct. App. 2002). In reviewing a trial court's decision for an abuse of discretion, we reverse only where the decision is clearly against the logic and effect of the facts and circumstances. Id.
Maddex contends that the trial court should have granted his motion to dismiss because: (1) the State caused or allowed evidence to be destroyed prior to trial; and (2)the State failed to respond to his pre-trial discovery request to provide a summary of the expected trial testimony of the State's witnesses.4 We will address each issue in turn.
Criminal defendants have the right to examine physical evidence in the hands of the State under the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution and Article One, Section Twelve of the Indiana Constitution.5 Terry v. State, 857 N.E.2d 396, 406 (Ind. Ct. App. 2006), transfer denied. The appropriate test to apply when deciding whether a defendant's due process rights have been violated by the State's failure to preserve evidence depends on whether the evidence in question was "potentially useful evidence" or "material exculpatory evidence" as these terms were employed in Arizona v. Youngblood, 488 U.S. 51, 109 S.Ct. 333, 337, 102 L.Ed.2d 281 (1988), reh'g denied. Blanchard v. State, 802 N.E.2d 14, 26 (Ind. Ct. App. 2004).
The United States Supreme Court has defined potentially useful evidence as "evidentiary material of which no more can be said than that it could have been subjected to tests, the results of which might have exonerated the defendant." Blanchard, 802 N.E.2d at 26 (quoting Youngblood, 109 S.Ct. at 337). As such, the State's failure to preserve the evidence does not constitute a violation of due process rights unless thedefendant shows bad faith on the part of the police. Blanchard, 802 N.E.2d at 26-27. On the other hand, to rise to the level of material exculpatory evidence, the "evidence must both possess an exculpatory value that was apparent before the evidence was destroyed, and be of such a nature that the defendant would be unable to obtain comparable evidence by other reasonably available means." Id. at 27 (quoting California v. Trombetta, 467 U.S. 479, 104 S.Ct. 2528, 2534, 81 L.Ed.2d 413 (1984)). When the evidence is defined as material exculpatory evidence, the State's good or bad faith in failing to preserve the evidence is irrelevant. Blanchard, 802 N.E.2d at 27. While a defendant is not required to prove conclusively that the destroyed evidence is exculpatory, there must be some indication that the evidence was exculpatory. Id.
In this case, the lost evidence consisted of: (1) Maddex's orange 1987 Chevy Blazer, which the officers found several blocks from the Store; and (2) photographs that Officer Simpson took at the Store on the night of the incident, including several photographs of Perry.
The police impounded the Blazer on the night of the arrest and had it towed to a private towing company's yard. After the police searched the Blazer, they released their impound hold on the vehicle on September 10, 2008. The towing company sold the Blazer for scrap several months later, and it was subsequently destroyed. Maddex argues that if he had been allowed access to the Blazer, he would have used it at trial to demonstrate that he could not have brought a ladder to the Store on that vehicle. Nevertheless, the State released its hold on the Blazer within three (3) days after impounding it, so the Blazer was no longer in the State's control when it was sold forscrap and destroyed months later. In fact, it is undisputed that Maddex could have regained the Blazer from the towing company at any time after the State released its hold if Maddex had paid the storage and...
To continue reading
Request your trial