COA affirms child molester’s convictions despite abuse of discretion

The Court of Appeals of Indiana has affirmed a child molester’s convictions after finding that while the trial court abused its discretion in admitting the child’s consistent recorded pretrial statement, the abuser failed to prove his substantial rights were affected as a result.

In the case of John William Rosenbaum, III v. State of Indiana, 21A-CR-1409, John Rosenbaum III was convicted of Level 3 felony child molesting and Level 4 felony child molesting after abusing his stepchild, V.V.

Two questions came before the Court of Appeals for consideration.

The appellate court first looked into whether the Hendricks Superior Court abused its discretion when it admitted both the recorded interview and the live trial testimony of the child victim. Rosenbaum also questioned whether the trial court abused its discretion when it relied on the Child Deposition Statute in denying his request to depose the child victim.

The Court of Appeals concluded that V.V.’s recorded interview and her trial testimony were consistent, the case of (Tyler v. State, 903 N.E.2d 463 (Ind. 2009)) applied and the Hendricks Superior Court abused its discretion when it admitted both the interview and the trial testimony.

However, it noted that although the trial court abused its discretion, the differences were “minor in that they essentially describe the same act … ,” and that the concerns regarding the safeguards on the veracity of the child’s statement present in (Cox v. State, 937 N.E.2d 874, 879 (Ind. Ct. App. 2010), trans. denied) were not at issue in the case at hand.

“In short, we conclude that Rosenbaum has failed to establish that his substantial rights were affected by the admission of V.V.’s recorded interview,” Judge Patricia Riley wrote.

As for the deposition issue, the appellate court cited the Indiana Supreme Court’s decision in Church v. State, 173 N.E.3d 302 (Ind. Ct. App. 2021), noting that the high court already rejected arguments that the Child Deposition Statute conflicts with Trial Rules 26 and 30, as applicable to a criminal case through Indiana Code § 35-37-4-2.

As such, the COA concluded that the trial court did not abuse its discretion in relying on the CDS to prohibit Rosenbaum from deposing V.V.

“Based on the foregoing, we conclude that the trial court abused its discretion when it admitted V.V.’s consistent recorded pretrial statement but that Rosenbaum failed to establish that his substantial rights were affected as a result,” Riley wrote. “We further conclude that the trial court did not abuse its discretion when it rejected Rosenbaum’s request to depose his child victim pursuant to a valid statute limiting Rosenbaum’s right to do so.”