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As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowA man who tried to avenge his sister by beating up her boyfriend who allegedly threatened to hit her failed to convince appellate judges that the boyfriend did not suffer serious bodily injuries from the attack carried out during a burglary.
After hearing through the grapevine that his sister’s boyfriend had threatened to hit her, Jonathon Barthalow broke into a home where several people were drinking to confront him. Busting down a bedroom door, Barthalow proceeded to attack Joshua Mays, knocking him to the floor and eventually trying to throw him out the window.
When other individuals in the home called 911, Barthalow fled the scene but was later arrested and charged with Level 2 felony burglary and Level 5 felony battery resulting in serious bodily injury. A jury ultimately concluded that Mays did suffer serious bodily injuries due to his “extreme pain,” and thus found Barthalow guilty of Level 3 felony burglary, a lesser included offense of his conviction of Level 2 felony burglary.
Barthalow appealed that Mays did not receive serious bodily injuries from the attack, specifically arguing that because the jury did not find Barthalow guilty of the Level 2 felony burglary conviction, it “must have found the predicate felony battery for the [Level 3 burglary] to be one which resulted in moderate bodily injury.”
But the Indiana Court of Appeals found that even if his assertion was correct, Barthalow’s argument misunderstood the difference between the intent to inflict “moderate” or “serious bodily injury” and the resulting injury.
“In other words, the State had to prove that Barthalow intended that his actions result in moderate or serious bodily injury of Mays, not that his actions actually resulted in moderate or serious bodily injury to Mays,” Judge Margret Robb wrote for the panel. “The burglary statute only requires the intent to commit the felony, battery here, and that the burglary resulted in bodily injury to Mays.”
The appellate court additionally found that the burglary statute only required Mays’ injuries to meet the definition of “bodily injury,” implying less proof was required than if the statute listed moderate or serious bodily injury. It also noted that the trial court’s failure to give instructions on the lesser-included offenses did not constitute fundamental error.
“Although the definition of bodily injury was not included in the jury instructions, it was provided in the State’s closing argument and displayed on a screen at that time,” Robb wrote. “Moreover, the jury instructions included the definitions of serious bodily injury and moderate bodily injury… Based on the provided definitions, the jury could likely infer from common sense the meaning of bodily injury.”
The appellate court therefore found sufficient evidence to support Barthalow’s conviction in Jonathon Barthalow v. State of Indiana, 18A-CR-1366.
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