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As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowA woman convicted and sentenced in federal court on a charge of conspiring to distribute meth lost her appeal seeking to dismiss state court charges, both of which referenced the same police raid of the hotel where she lived and where the drugs were found.
Amanda Dill was arrested after police executed a search warrant on a hotel room where she was living in French Lick with her boyfriend and two children. That no-knock search on March 3, 2015, turned up marijuana and methamphetamine, and Dill was charged with Level 2 felony dealing in methamphetamine, Level 6 felony maintaining a common nuisance, and Class B misdemeanor possession of marijuana.
About a month later, Dill was charged with 13 co-defendants in federal court, where she pleaded guilty to the conspiracy count and was sentenced five years in prison and three years of supervised release. Dill then moved the state court to dismiss the prior state charges, which she said constituted double jeopardy. The Orange Circuit Court denied the motion to dismiss the state charges, leading to this interlocutory appeal that affirmed the trial court.
Senior Judge Randall Shepard wrote that while I.C. § 35-41-4-5 bars state courts from prosecutions for the same conduct as a federal prosecution that resulted in a conviction or acquittal, the law doesn’t apply to the facts of Dill’s case.
“Here, the federal charges to which Dill pleaded guilty were for her involvement in a conspiracy to possess and distribute methamphetamine. The record reflects the overt acts –– one on February 8, 2015, and one on February 12, 2015 –– establishing her involvement and participation in the alleged conspiracy, lasting roughly nine months before culminating in her arrest on March 3, 2015, after the execution of the search warrant,” Shepard wrote.
“… We conclude that the criminal statutes invoked and the facts supporting each were sufficiently separate that two prosecutions did not constitute the ‘same conduct,’” the panel concluded in Amanda Dill v. State of Indiana, 59A01-1610-CR-2449.
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