Sentence upheld for Orange County man in baby’s drug-related death 

An Orange County man will keep his decades-long sentence for felony neglect of a dependent resulting in death after the Indiana Court of Appeals concluded that there was no abuse of discretion in rejecting the man’s plea agreement. 

In December 2018, Tyler Harris and his family visited Preston Judd, with whom Harris smoked marijuana and used methamphetamine while the children in the home played in another room. 

Judd kept a baby bottle full of liquid methadone stored in his bedroom closet and Harris was aware that methadone was in the home before the visit. Sometime before Harris left his home, Judd retrieved the baby bottle and brought it into the kitchen, placing it on a shelf. Shortly after the Harris family left Judd’s home, Harris’ child C.H. fell asleep. 

The family later found C.H. unresponsive in his crib.  When the child was taken to the hospital, it was found he died from methadone toxicity. A forensic pathologist testified that a fatal dose of methadone for a child C.H.’s size would be approximately 10 milligrams, or about one teaspoon of liquid methadone.

Harris was charged with Level 1 felony neglect of a dependent resulting in death and agreed to plead guilty to Level 3 felony neglect of a dependent causing serious bodily injury. Pursuant to the terms of his plea agreement, Harris and the state agreed that he would receive a sentence of nine years, with eight years suspended.

When accepting the plea, the trial court stated, “the Court will accept your plea of guilty to neglect of a dependent causing serious bodily injury as a level three felony. However, I am going to withhold the sentence because it is a level three, and the nature of the case, until a pre-sentence investigation is done.” 

But after reviewing the PSI, the trial court rejected his plea agreement and a jury later sentenced Harris to 30 years behind bars for Level 1 felony neglect of a dependent resulting in death. 

On appeal, Harris asserted that because the trial court had previously accepted his guilty plea, the court abused its discretion when it rejected his plea agreement, violating Indiana Code section 35-35-1-2. 

The Indiana Court of Appeals disagreed, finding that it does not interpret the statute to mean that once a court accepts a guilty plea that it automatically accepts the plea agreement.

“Rather we read it to say that, before a court may accept a plea of guilty it must inform a defendant that, if it accepts a plea agreement, it will be bound by its terms. Here, we have no such acceptance, so the trial court is not bound by the plea agreement which it intended to review on a later date,” Chief Judge Cale Bradford wrote for the appellate court. 

“The trial court was acting with its discretion when it accepted Harris’s guilty plea but explained that it would not be accepting the plea agreement until it reviewed the PSI. … If this plea agreement had been explicitly accepted when the guilty plea was given, the trial court would have had no discretion at sentencing. It is clear, however, that the trial court’s motive was to review the PSI, and only then determine whether the sentence provided for in the plea agreement was acceptable. When the trial court did review the PSI, it determined that the plea agreement was unacceptable and allowed Harris to revoke his guilty plea before the court set a trial date. Harris failed to establish that the trial court abused its discretion in rejecting his plea agreement,” it concluded.