Wahl v. State

• Citation: 148 N.E.3d 1071
• Decision Date: 12 May 2020
• Docket Number: Court of Appeals Case No. 19A-CR-2258
• Parties: Daniel WAHL and Saundra Wahl, Appellants-Defendants, v. STATE of Indiana, Appellee-Plaintiff.
• Court: Court of Appeals of Indiana

148 N.E.3d 1071

Daniel WAHL and Saundra Wahl, Appellants-Defendants,

v.STATE of Indiana, Appellee-Plaintiff.

Court of Appeals Case No. 19A-CR-2258

Court of Appeals of Indiana.

FILED May 12, 2020

STATEMENT OF THE CASE

[1] Appellants-Defendants, Daniel Wahl (Daniel) and Saundra Wahl (Saundra), (collectively, the Wahls), appeal their conviction for involuntary manslaughter, Class D felonies, Ind. Code § 35-42-1-4 (2013).

[2] We affirm.

ISSUES

[3] The Wahls present this court with four issues on appeal, which we consolidate and restate as the following three issues:

(1) Whether the trial court abused its discretion by admitting certain evidence;

(2) Whether the State presented sufficient evidence to sustain the Wahls' involuntary manslaughter conviction; and

(3) Whether the trial court abused its discretion by ordering the Wahls to pay restitution.

FACTS AND PROCEDURAL HISTORY

[4] In 2003, the Wahls built their home in Fishers, Indiana, with the primary intention of operating a daycare facility from their basement. In 2006, the Wahls were licensed and they operated a daycare business under the name, Home Away from Home Child Care, LLC. Saundra was responsible for toddlers ranging from five months to two years old, while Daniel was responsible for the older children. In the spring of 2011, after touring the Wahls' daycare, Danny (Danny) and Jocelyne DiRienzo (collectively, the DiRienzos), enrolled their minor children, D.D., and A.D. at the Wahls' daycare.

[5] The Wahls had placed several security gates in their home. In the basement hallway, there was a white metal security gate—the gate at issue in this cause—closing off the stairway leading to the first floor. If the gate was open, one had to pick up the gate and bring it over and place it down into a U-shaped cradle where it would snap into place. In 2006, Daniel made repairs to the gate's hinges "because it [had] started to give way." (Transcript Vol. II, p. 172). More specifically, the screws used to secure the gate's hinges had started pulling out from the "wood studs in the wall." (Tr. Vol. II, p. 172). Instead of using regular screws, Daniel used "some bolts and washers and nuts to hold it in place." (Tr. Vol. II, p. 173). To do all of that, he "went behind the wall and added two additional wood studs, got long bolts, drilled through, put those on with washers behind it and lock nuts so that they wouldn't come loose." (Tr. Vol. II, p. 173). Then sometime in 2006, Daniel made further improvements to the gate since a spindle had come loose, and he reattached it with some epoxy glue. According to Daniel, the Indiana Family and Social Services Administration (FSSA) had never given any directives or corrective actions to the Wahls regarding the gate.

[6] In June of 2013, A.D. was a healthy, twenty-month-old toddler. On June 20, 2013, between 8:00 a.m. and 10:00 a.m., Daniel was in the backyard greeting parents as they came in with their children. Daniel kept the older children with him, and he took the younger children to the basement to be cared for by Saundra. After the older children had lunch outside, Daniel lined them up at the stairway leading to the basement to go inside for their scheduled naps. At that moment, Daniel heard Saundra scream for help. After ensuring that all the children were inside the house, he proceeded to go to the basement. There, he found Saundra standing over A.D. who was lying motionless on the basement floor. Immediately, Daniel began performing CPR on A.D. while Saundra called 9-1-1.

[7] At approximately 12:23 p.m., Officer Ryan Ermel (Officer Ermel) of the Fishers Police Department was first to arrive at the Wahls' residence. Officer Ermel found Daniel administering CPR to A.D. and he assisted with the process. Shortly thereafter, the EMTs and two other officers arrived. The EMTs took over the CPR process and A.D. was transported to the Community North Hospital emergency room. At approximately 12:52 p.m., Detective David Finn (Detective Finn), arrived at the Wahls' residence and he began questioning Daniel as to the daily daycare procedures.

[8] At 12:59 p.m., A.D. was pronounced dead. During Daniel's narration of the daily daycare procedures to Detective Finn and another officer, Saundra emerged from the basement and ran up the stairs to inform Daniel that A.D. was deceased. Detective Finn stopped questioning Daniel so that Daniel could give Saundra some comfort. After a few minutes, Detective Finn sat down with Saundra and Daniel. Saundra was still hysterical, and she was crying about "how this wasn't supposed to happen[,] and this shouldn't have happened." (Appellant's App. Vol. IV, p. 220). During this time, a chaplain arrived and met with both Daniel and Saundra and he prayed with them. Detective James Hawkins (Detective Hawkins) and Detective Doug Baker (Detective Baker) arrived at the Wahls' residence. At that point, Detective Finn asked Daniel to recite the events that took place during the time of the incident. Detective Hawkins then started processing the scene, while Detective Baker spoke with Saundra.

[9] During the afternoon, other officers continued to arrive. One officer asked Daniel for a contact list of the children's parents. After about 15 to 20 minutes, Daniel had not found the parents contact list but eventually either Daniel or Saundra provided the list. The police began contacting the parents of the children. The Wahls' residence was taped off, and a canopy was set up close to their residence so that parents of the other children could retrieve their children without going inside the house.

[10] As Detective Hawkins took photographs of the interior of the house, he noticed that the basement hallway gate where A.D. had become lodged opened easily with "[m]aybe a couple pounds" of pressure: "I mean it was, there wasn't much to it. It was just the very tip of that metal and you can kind of see all the wear marks[,] so it was, there wasn't a whole lot to it. You just sort of pop it open." (Tr. Vol. III, p. 76). Daniel, who was also in the basement at this time, informed Detective Hawkins that he and Saundra mitigated the issue "by placing some furniture on either side of the gate to try to keep the kids from pushing through it." (Tr. Vol. III, p. 76).

[11] At around 5:00 p.m., there were no children inside the residence, but there were multiple officers in the home. Detective Finn asked Saundra to participate in a video reenacting the events leading to the moment she discovered A.D. stuck in the gate. Saundra stated that she had left A.D. with another child, who was less than two years of age, at the far end of the toddler and infant room. Saundra stated that she walked into the kitchen to feed another young girl who was seated in a highchair, and after she fed the child in the highchair, she momentarily faced away from the toddler and infant room and began warming milk bottles in the sink. Once the bottles were warm, she picked up the child from the highchair and carried her on her hip along with a bottle back into the toddler and infant room. Once in the toddler and infant room, she saw A.D. face down, wedged at the neck between the basement metal security gate and the wall. Saundra sat the child she was carrying down, and attended to A.D. After Saundra freed A.D. from the white metal security gate, she noticed that A.D. was unresponsive and not breathing. Saundra promptly began performing CPR on A.D. As she was doing that, she saw two older children who had been out in the backyard, and she requested that they call Daniel. The children did not comprehend, so Saundra momentarily left A.D. on the floor, rushed to the base of the stairway, and yelled to Daniel for assistance.

[12] When asked to reposition the furniture that was close to the metal security gate, she placed a rocking chair facing the infant room with its back against the gate, and she placed a swing on the other side of the gate leading to the stairway. Saundra explained that she needed to do that because if the children shook it "real hard, they would loosen" the gate. (State's Exh. 45 at 4:28). Saundra was then asked to place a doll in the position where she found A.D. stuck in the gate. Detective Finn observed that the white metal security gate that had choked A.D. did not latch correctly. Detective Finn also observed that if the gate was open, there was no line of sight from the kitchen. At the end of the interview, the officers removed the gate from the residence and took it with them.

[13] On September 19, 2013, the State filed an Information, charging the Wahls with involuntary manslaughter, a Class D felony. They were tried jointly and found guilty by a jury. They appealed separately, arguing that there was insufficient evidence to sustain their convictions, the trial court erred when it declined to grant a mistrial due to juror misconduct, their sentences were inappropriate, and that the trial court erred in ordering restitution. We affirmed their convictions in separate opinions: Wahl v. State , 36 N.E.3d 1163 (Ind. Ct. App. 2015) (Daniel's); and Wahl v. State , 36 N.E.3d 1147 (Ind. Ct. App. 2015) (Saundra's). Our supreme court granted transfer and consolidated their cases. The supreme court consequently found that the Wahls' motion for mistrial due to juror misconduct should have been granted, it reversed their convictions, and it remanded their cases for a new trial. See Wahl v. State , 51 N.E.3d 113 (Ind. 2016).

[14] The Wahls were tried jointly at another jury trial on August 7 through August 9, 2019. Before their second trial, the Wahls filed their expert witness list, disclosing Dr. Edward Dragan (Dr. Dragan) as a potential expert witness. In a deposition before their second trial, Dr. Dragan had testified that his area of expertise was reading and interpreting regulations that were applicable to daycares. However, Dr. Dragan stated that his area of expertise did not involve interpreting regulations affecting daycares for children under the age...