Sanchez v. State

Citation749 N.E.2d 509
Decision Date26 June 2001
Docket NumberNo. 92S03-0009-CR-518.,92S03-0009-CR-518.
PartiesGuadalupe A. SANCHEZ, Appellant (Defendant Below), v. STATE of Indiana, Appellee (Plaintiff Below).
CourtIndiana Supreme Court

Susan K. Carpenter, Public Defender of Indiana, Gregory L. Lewis, Deputy Public Defender, Indianapolis, Indiana, Attorneys for Appellant.

Jeffrey A. Modisett, Attorney General of Indiana, Barbara Gasper Hines, Deputy Attorney General, Indianapolis, Indiana, Attorneys for Appellee.

ON PETITION FOR TRANSFER

BOEHM, Justice.

We hold that Indiana Code section 35-41-2-5, prohibiting the use of evidence of voluntary intoxication to negate the mens rea requirement in criminal cases, does not violate the Indiana Constitution.

Factual and Procedural Background

On the night of July 6, 1998, Guadalupe Sanchez attended a birthday party in a trailer in Allen County, Indiana. All nine people at the party were drinking and some were smoking marijuana. Sanchez was noticeably intoxicated after consuming between two and twenty-four beers and several glasses of tequila. He was asked to leave after he was accused of "grabbing all the girls' butts."

Sanchez soon returned to the trailer with a gun. He held the four remaining occupants of the trailer hostage while he attempted to find a woman who had already left the party. After the four hostages convinced Sanchez that they did not know where the woman was, he ordered one of the hostages to remove all of the telephones in the trailer, took the phones, and forced seventeen-year-old H.S. to leave with him.

Sanchez and H.S. walked for thirty minutes to a cornfield where Sanchez forced H.S. to remove her clothes and then raped her. When she complained that he was hurting her, Sanchez performed oral sex on her, and then raped her several more times. The pair then walked three and one-half miles to Sanchez's house, hiding in ditches when cars passed. When they reached the house, Sanchez took H.S. to the basement and again raped her. Both Sanchez and H.S. then fell asleep.

Early that morning, the police arrived and found Sanchez asleep next to H.S. with a loaded weapon near his right hand and his left hand around H.S.'s neck. At trial, the trial court gave the following instruction over Sanchez's objection: "Voluntary intoxication is not a defense to the charge of Rape and Confinement. You may not take voluntary intoxication into consideration in determining whether the Defendant acted knowingly or intentionally, as alleged in the information." This instruction accurately reflects Indiana law, effective July 1, 1997, as codified in Indiana Code section 35-41-2-5. Pub. L. No. 210-1997, § 3, 1997 Ind. Acts 2938. A jury convicted Sanchez of rape and criminal confinement and he was sentenced to forty years imprisonment.

On appeal, Sanchez argues that it was error to give the voluntary intoxication instruction because the Due Course of Law provision of the Indiana Constitution and several other state constitutional provisions establish his right to present a voluntary intoxication defense. The Court of Appeals, after an extensive examination of the origin of Article I, Section 12 and the history of intoxication as a defense, found that Sanchez had provided no independent analysis supporting a due course of law claim under the Indiana Constitution, and therefore evaluated this issue under federal due process doctrine. Sanchez v. State, 732 N.E.2d 165, 173 (Ind.Ct. App.2000). The Court of Appeals found Montana v. Egelhoff, 518 U.S. 37, 116 S.Ct. 2013, 135 L.Ed.2d 361 (1996), dispositive. The court concluded that there was no federal due process violation because, in the terms of the plurality opinion in Egelhoff, prohibiting evidence of intoxication did not offend "a principle of justice so rooted in the traditions and conscience of our people so as to be ranked fundamental." Sanchez, 732 N.E.2d at 173.

I. Voluntary Intoxication as a Defense Under Indiana Law

The Court of Appeals opinion contains a more detailed account of the history of voluntary intoxication as a defense to the mens rea element of crimes. In summary, at the time of the debates surrounding the 1851 Constitution, drunkenness and intoxicating liquors were viewed quite harshly. Proposals to the Constitution were made to prohibit licenses to sell liquor and to prevent the State from benefiting from liquor sales. At common law, intoxication was itself an offense, and the prevailing view was that one crime was no defense to another.1 By 1860, this Court, consistent with other states, had come to the view that evidence of intoxication might be allowed in certain homicide crimes. O'Herrin v. State, 14 Ind. 420, 420, 1860 WL 4131 (1860). Thirty years later, this Court held that evidence of intoxication was admissible to reduce a first-degree murder conviction to second-degree. Aszman v. State, 123 Ind. 347, 353-59, 24 N.E. 123, 125-27 (1890). By 1901, the Court had extended the use of intoxication evidence to all crimes requiring proof of specific intent. Booher v. State, 156 Ind. 435, 448-49, 60 N.E. 156, 160 (1901). This became the majority position in the United States. See Montana v. Egelhoff, 518 U.S. 37, 46-47, 116 S.Ct. 2013, 135 L.Ed.2d 361 (1996)

.

In 1980, the legislature added Indiana Code section 35-41-3-5(b), which attempted to limit the use of voluntary intoxication as a defense to crimes that required "with intent to" or "with intention to." Four years later, in Terry v. State, 465 N.E.2d 1085, 1088 (Ind.1984), this Court held that, "[a]ny factor which serves as a denial of the existence of mens rea must be considered by a trier of fact before a guilty finding is entered," and concluded that the statute was unconstitutional.

In 1996, the United States Supreme Court held that a state could prohibit a criminal defendant from offering evidence of voluntary intoxication to negate the requisite mens rea without violating the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Egelhoff, 518 U.S. at 56, 116 S.Ct. 2013. Therefore, as we observed in State v. Van Cleave, 674 N.E.2d 1293, 1302 n. 15 (Ind.1996), the Terry doctrine is "no longer good law" insofar as it is grounded in the federal constitutional guarantee of due process. In 1997, in response to Egelhoff, the legislature enacted Indiana Code section 35-41-2-5. This section provides: "Intoxication is not a defense in a prosecution for an offense and may not be taken into consideration in determining the existence of a mental state that is an element of the offense . . . [with exceptions not relevant here]." If this statute is consistent with the state constitution, the instruction in Sanchez's trial properly captured the law of Indiana governing a claim of lack of intent by reason of voluntary intoxication. As explained below, compatibility of the statute with the federal constitution was established in Egelhoff, but the state constitutional issues have not been resolved by this Court.

II. Article I, Section 12—Due Course of Law and "Substantive Due Process"

Sanchez first argues that Indiana's Due Course of Law provision, when read in conjunction with the other constitutional provisions, "protected Sanchez's ability to challenge the State's proof of his intent by putting on a defense of voluntary intoxication." According to Sanchez, Indiana Code section 35-41-2-52 is unconstitutional because it violates Article I, Section 12, in addition to several other constitutional provisions. Although he does not analyze Section 12 independently of other constitutional provisions, Sanchez phrases his argument in terms of due course of law. His contention seems to be that the criminal protections in the other sections of the Indiana Constitution create either a "protectable interest" under the Due Course of Law provision or establish that the voluntary intoxication defense is "firmly ingrained" and, therefore, cannot be abolished by the legislature because of the Due Course of Law provision. The State tersely responds that, "Clearly the [voluntary intoxication] instruction does not violate the Indiana Constitution," relying on the proposition that due course of law claims are to be examined using the same analysis as federal due process claims. We agree with the State's conclusion, but not with its reasoning.

No case from this Court other than Terry v. State, 465 N.E.2d 1085, 1088 (Ind. 1984), has considered the need for a voluntary intoxication defense under either the federal or state constitution. Terry did not state in so many words that a statutory abolition of the defense of voluntary intoxication is prohibited by the Indiana Constitution. We nevertheless have the proposition from Terry that the issue presented in that case was whether elimination of voluntary intoxication as a defense "is violative of the Constitution of the United States and the State of Indiana." Terry, 465 N.E.2d at 1087. The constitutional basis for Terry's conclusion that the voluntary intoxication statute is "void and without effect" is not clear. Id. at 1088. Terry adopted the concurring opinion in Sills v. State, 463 N.E.2d 228, 240 (Ind. 1984) (Givan, C.J.), overruled on other grounds by Wright v. State, 658 N.E.2d 563, 569-70 (Ind.1995),

which took the view that every crime necessarily has a mens rea requirement. Sills did not make clear whether a specific constitutional provision was thought to impose such a requirement, or, if so, what provision of the federal or state constitution it was. In sum, although Terry, via Sills, suggests that the Indiana Constitution forbids a limitation on the voluntary intoxication defense, neither opinion indicates what provision of the state constitution supports that conclusion.

The same is true of the concurrence in this case.

Sanchez points to the "due course of law" phrase as the source of his Indiana constitutional claim. Questions arising under the Indiana Constitution are to be resolved "by examining the language of the text in the context of the history...

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