Evidence of victim’s prior offenses rightly excluded

A man convicted and sentenced to 45 years in prison for a brutal attack that left his 77-year-old victim hospitalized for months failed to persuade the Court of Appeals that evidence of the victim’s prior offenses had been wrongly excluded at his trial.

A Lake Superior jury last year convicted David Harman of attempted murder for the May 2011 attack on J.R. Jenkins at his home in Hammond. Jenkins’ throat had been “filleted,” according to a trauma surgeon.

In  David J. Harman v. State of Indiana, 45A05-1304-CR-153, Harman challenged his conviction and sentence on the basis that evidence of Jenkins’ 1979 convictions in Illinois for attempted murder, conspiracy to commit murder and solicitation to commit murder had been excluded.

Also excluded was Jenkins’ prior conviction for threatening his ex-wife on the phone in violation of a protective order that had been issued before the attack. Harman and Jenkins’ ex-wife had been dating at the time of Jenkins’ conviction.

“(T)he trial court gave Harman the chance to explain the substance, relevance, and admissibility of the proposed evidence,” Judge Rudolph R. Pyle III wrote for the panel. “Harman has failed to show that the trial court abused its discretion regarding its evidentiary ruling on the protective order.”

Evidence of the 1979 convictions was correctly precluded from the jury’s consideration due to the distance in time, the panel ruled.

Harman’s sentence was not inappropriate because the court found the brutal nature of the offense was a significant aggravating factor.