Stephenson v. State
| Decision Date | 23 April 2015 |
| Docket Number | No. 15S00–1401–LW–40.,15S00–1401–LW–40. |
| Parties | Charles STEPHENSON, Appellant (Defendant), v. STATE of Indiana, Appellee (Plaintiff). |
| Court | Indiana Supreme Court |
Leanna K. Weissmann, Lawrenceburg, IN, Attorney for Appellant.
Gregory F. Zoeller, Attorney General of Indiana, Brian L. Reitz, Deputy Attorney General, Lynn M. Deddens, Deputy Prosecutor, Dearborn County Prosecutor's Office, Indianapolis, IN, Attorneys for Appellee.
Convicted following a jury trial for the April 2012 robbery and murder of 67–year–old Leigh Jennings in Aurora, Indiana, the defendant, Charles R. Stephenson, brings this direct appeal to challenge his convictions and resulting sentence of life imprisonment without parole. For the reasons expressed below, we affirm both the convictions and sentence.
Because the defendant was sentenced to life imprisonment without parole, this Court has mandatory and exclusive jurisdiction over this appeal. Ind. Appellate Rule 4(A)(1)(a). The defendant asserts the following appellate claims: (1) insufficient evidence of robbery; (2) insufficient evidence to support the sentence of life imprisonment without parole; (3) erroneous admission of suicide attempt evidence; (4) erroneous admission of evidence regarding the defendant's appearance after the victim's apparent death; and (5) sentence inappropriateness.1
The defendant challenges the sufficiency of the evidence supporting the robbery conviction. He argues that such conviction required proof that the physical violence perpetrated on Leigh Jennings was part of a plan to take her property and not just part of the murder.
In reviewing a claim of insufficient evidence, an appellate court will affirm if, considering only the probative evidence most favorable to the verdict and any reasonable resulting inferences and without reweighing the evidence or judging witness credibility, it finds that a reasonable finder of fact could find each element of the crime proven beyond a reasonable doubt. Baker v. State, 968 N.E.2d 227, 229 (Ind.2012) ; Grace v. State, 731 N.E.2d 442, 445 (Ind.2000).
The defendant was convicted of Robbery as a Class A Felony. This offense is defined as follows:
Leigh Jennings was found brutally bludgeoned to death in her kitchen. She died from blunt force head trauma, and her injuries were consistent with blows from the cast iron skillet and pepper mill found hanging in her pantry with blood drips on the wall behind. Calculated from her body decomposition rate, March 29, 2012, was the probable date of death. Jennings was a 67–year–old woman who eschewed modern medicine, distrusted banks, and was suspicious of the government. She kept cash at her house in two safes. Both safes were closed, but no money was found there or elsewhere in her home except for a twenty dollar bill in the kitchen and some change in a jar. One of Jennings's safes contained two handwritten promissory notes signed by the defendant for loans totaling $5,000 made in October and December of 2011. On past occasions when the defendant had borrowed money from Jennings, he would stay in the front of her house and she would return from a back bedroom with various denominations of twenties and hundreds, which the defendant suspected came from a safe. Police discovered at the murder scene a Papa John's pizza box in Jennings's kitchen labeled with the names of Jennings and the defendant. Jennings had called the defendant on March 29 at 6:55 pm and then telephoned Papa John's Pizza at 7:09 pm. Several text messages were exchanged between the defendant and Jennings until March 29. The defendant's vehicle was seen at Jennings's home on March 29. The defendant was deeply in debt and several of his creditors were threatening imminent legal action absent immediate repayment. Personally confronted by an attorney for one lender demanding payment for a bounced check by March 28, 2012, the defendant had sought a two-day extension for repayment until March 30. On Friday morning of that date, the defendant delivered a one thousand dollar money order to the attorney for the lender. When questioned about the source of the money, the defendant said that he had borrowed it from his friend John Rittenour, who denied loaning defendant the money. On May 9, police discovered the defendant on his bed, covered in blood from an apparent suicide attempt. The defendant had left a suicide note written to his son, emphasizing his financial distress and declaring that he had nothing to do with Jennings's murder. A few days later, it was determined that the defendant's DNA was on the pepper grinder and that he could not be excluded from the DNA found on the skillet. Jennings's blood was found on documents inside her back bedroom safe, and the defendant's fingerprint was found on a promissory note inside another safe.
The defendant contends that, to convict him of robbery, it was necessary for the evidence “to prove the physical violence perpetrated on Jennings was part of a plan to take her property and not just part of the murder.” Appellant's Br. at 21. Drawing on language in Buggs v. State, 844 N.E.2d 195 (Ind.Ct.App.2006), trans. denied, the defendant argued that, because an entire robbery could not occur after the victim was dead, the State in the present case should be required to show that the murder was used to effectuate the robbery, rather than the robbery being an afterthought after the murder.
The defense points to a lack of evidence that the defendant went to Jennings's home with any intent to murder or violently kill her to take money. He argues that the extreme amount of force used shows this to be a crime of passion and not a robbery attempt. He stresses that there is no evidence to support an inference that the taking of Jennings's property was effectuated by the use of force against her while she was still alive.
We disagree. There is no evidentiary support for the defense theory that the defendant first murdered Jennings and only thereafter decided to take her property. To the contrary, the evidence and its reasonable inferences show that the defendant, deep in debt, distraught, and desperate for cash, (1) went to Jennings home purposefully to obtain money and, either in response to her refusal to give it to him or in the absence of such refusal, (2) struck her in the head multiple times, killing her, and then (3) took cash from her safes. Obtaining Jennings's money was the defendant's objective. Whether the murder was committed in the course of the robbery or after its completion does not undermine the correctness of the robbery conviction. See Robinson v. State, 693 N.E.2d 548, 554 (Ind.1998) ( ). While a robbery conviction may not be proper when a robbery both commences and concludes on a dead person, the crime is committed when part of the robbery occurs before the victim's death and the other part occurs after the death. Id.
The probative evidence in this case was sufficient for a reasonable jury to conclude beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant knowingly or intentionally took property from another person by using or threatening the use of force, thus committing the offense of robbery.
Advancing a similar rationale, the defense contends that the evidence was insufficient to prove the charged statutory predicate for the sentence of life imprisonment without parole. The sole statutory aggravating circumstance charged was that the defendant “committed the murder by intentionally killing the victim while committing or attempting to commit ... Robbery.” Ind.Code § 35–50–2–9(b)(1)(G) (2008).
The defendant alternatively argues that the State failed to prove the charged aggravating circumstance because either (1) there was insufficient evidence to convict him of robbery, or (2) even if the robbery conviction is upheld, the nature of the murder and its simultaneous relation to the robbery were insufficient evidence to prove the statutory aggravating circumstance required here for the sentence of life imprisonment without parole. Having already found the evidence sufficient to prove robbery, we address only the defendant's second alternative claim—that the life without parole statute “specifically requires that the defendant intentionally killed the victim while committing the robbery.” Appellant's Br. at 29 (emphasis in original).
In light of the nature and extent of the brutal injuries inflicted in the murder of Jennings, the evidence was sufficient to prove that the killing was intentional. The defense does not seriously challenge this conclusion but rather focuses its argument on the claimed lack of proof that the murder was committed while committing or attempting to commit robbery. He urges that just because a robbery and a murder were committed does not satisfy the statutory predicate for a sentence of life imprisonment without parole, but rather “the State must present evidence that the defendant actually killed the victim while committing the robbery.” Id. (emphasis added). He argues that, if he killed Jennings, it was a crime of passion precipitated by his angry reaction to Jennings's refusal to loan him money, that there was no evidence that he went to her home intending to kill and rob her, that he brought no weapons, and...
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