Woods v. State

• Decision Date: 12 March 1984
• Docket Number: No. 882S300,882S300
• Citation: 460 N.E.2d 503
• Parties: Rodney K. WOODS, Appellant, v. STATE of Indiana, Appellee.
• Court: Indiana Supreme Court

Page 503

460 N.E.2d 503

Rodney K. WOODS, Appellant, v. STATE of Indiana, Appellee.

No. 882S300.

Supreme Court of Indiana.

March 12, 1984.

Aaron E. Haith, Choate, Visher & Haith, Indianapolis, for appellant.

Linley E. Pearson, Atty. Gen., Michael Gene Worden, Deputy Atty. Gen., Indianapolis, for appellee.

DeBRULER, Justice.

This is an appeal from a conviction of appellant for the crimes of robbery, a class A felony, Ind.Code Sec. 35-42-5-1, attempted robbery, criminal recklessness, and carrying a handgun without a license. He received a sentence of thirty years on the robbery conviction, and lesser sentences meted out for the other convictions were ordered to run concurrently.

At 6:30 p.m. on the evening of October 24, 1981, a man and woman were crossing the parking lot of a shopping center together on the east side of Indianapolis. Appellant grabbed the woman by her hair, wrapped it around his hand like a rope, and forced her to the ground. He ordered the man to give him "three big ones." He jabbed a gun in the woman's ribs and said "I'll cut her in half." He jerked her purse away and fled from the scene at a run. The woman testified that she was in pain as he held her hair, that she lost hair from her head, and that she had headaches for a month after the incident. She testified that State's Exhibit 3A was the gun which appellant pointed at her. The man and woman testified that they did not see or speak to appellant before he grabbed the woman and she screamed.

A group of men and boys joined the man in chasing appellant as he sought to escape the scene. Several testified at trial and identified Exhibit 3A as the gun with which he threatened them during the chase. One testified that he saw appellant throw the gun in a ditch. Appellant was arrested shortly thereafter by the police and the gun was retrieved from a ditch. During the chase, appellant ran right through a dumpster. The woman's purse was retrieved from beneath the dumpster.

Appellant testified and contradicted the testimony of the State's witnesses in most respects. He stated that he was subjected by the man involved to a scurrilous racial epithet and knife attack, and that he did not grab the woman's purse and drew his unloaded gun and acted throughout the incident in self-defense.

On appeal, appellant raises the following alleged errors:

(1) That the evidence is insufficient to support the conviction.

(2) That the trial court erred in overruling his objection to State's Exhibit 3A.

I.

He first contends that the evidence serving to establish his intent to commit the crime of robbery, the resultant bodily injury, and to negate his defense of self-defense, was wholly insufficient to support the jury verdict. In determining this question we do not weigh the evidence nor resolve questions of credibility but look to the evidence and reasonable inferences therefrom which support the verdict. Smith v. State, (1970) 254 Ind. 401, 260 N.E.2d 558. The conviction will be affirmed if from that viewpoint there is evidence of probative value from which a reasonable trier of fact could infer that appellant was guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. Glover v. State, (1970) 253 Ind. 536, 255 N.E.2d 657.

The woman victim testified that appellant made an initial unprovoked assault upon her, jabbed a gun in her ribs, demanded money, and fled the scene with her purse. This was susceptible of belief and sufficient to warrant the requisite inference that appellant had the state of mind required by the robbery statute. In Cole v. State, (1980) Ind., 403 N.E.2d 337, the evidence presented showed no more than the accused entered a store, pointed a gun at the cashier and said "Don't anybody move." It was deemed sufficient to warrant the inference of intent to commit armed robbery. The evidence here is much stronger because it includes a description of an actual taking of property.

The same testimony demonstrating intent is also sufficient to rebut appellant's claim of self-defense, in that if believed, as the jury had a right to do, it would...