COA affirms Madison County man’s 40-year armed robbery sentence

The Indiana Court of Appeals has affirmed a man’s 40-year sentence for conviction of armed robbery, finding the trial court did not abuse its discretion in sentencing him or in granting his belated appeal.

In April 2013, Jay Crouse pleaded guilty to four counts of Class B felony robbery based on four separate robberies he committed in January and February 2013. As part of his plea agreement, Crouse waived the right to appeal his sentence as long as “the Court sentence[d] defendant within the terms” of the plea agreement.

During the sentencing hearing, the state argued Crouse should be sentenced to 10 years for each robbery count, to be served consecutive to one another. However, Crouse argued he should receive an aggregate 15-year sentence with six years executed. But the trial court sentenced him to 10 years for each count to run consecutively.

Crouse subsequently filed a pro se petition for post-conviction relief and later, with the aid of post-conviction counsel, filed a petition for permission to file a belated notice of appeal. Although the trial court initially scheduled a hearing on the issue, it denied Crouse’s petition and canceled the hearing.

But the trial court eventually held a hearing on Crouse’s motion to correct error and granted it, giving him permission to file a belated appeal.

The appellate court affirmed, finding that the trial court neither abused its discretion in sentencing him to four 10-year sentences to be served consecutively or granting Crouse’s petition for permission to file a belated appeal.

As to the belated appeal, the appellate court pointed to Crouse’s reliance on Haddock v. State, 112 N.E.3d 763 (Ind. Ct. App. 2018),  finding the facts of the case to be similar to Crouse’s case.

“Like in Haddock, Crouse has alleged he was not sentenced in accordance with the applicable law, and thus the trial court did not abuse its discretion when it granted his motion to correct error and allowed him to file a belated appeal,” Judge Melissa May wrote for the appellate court.

On the issue of his consecutive sentences, it noted that Crouse committed four separate and distinct criminal acts by robbing two different convenience stores on four different dates.

“The fact that one of the clerks was so unfortunate to be victimized twice does not suggest the trial court abused its discretion when sentencing Crouse,” the appellate court wrote.

“However, the trial court’s misstatement noting four, and not three, victims does not mean we are required to remand for revision of his sentence because we will only do so if we cannot ‘say with confidence that the trial court would have imposed the same sentence had it properly considered reasons that enjoy support in the record.’ Here, there were four separate robberies, on four different days, victimizing multiple store clerks, wherein Crouse took four amounts of money. The State also presented evidence during the sentencing hearing that Crouse had an ongoing substance abuse problem and had been rated on his pre-sentencing report as a high risk to reoffend. The trial court did not abuse its discretion when it sentenced Crouse,” it concluded.

Judge Nancy Vaidik in a separate opinion concurred in the result reached by the majority, but declined to join its reliance on Haddock based on her belief that it was wrongly decided.

In her opinion, Vaidik opined that “the defendant in Haddock was not an ‘eligible defendant’ under Post Conviction Rule 2, his petition for permission to file a belated appeal was properly denied, and this Court should not have reversed.”

“Here, on the other hand, Crouse identified a specific, plausible theory of illegality. He claimed that the only aggravator found by the trial court — that each robbery count involved ‘a separate victim’ — is invalid because two of the robberies involved the same victim. If Crouse were correct that this aggravator is invalid, then his sentence would be illegal, because consecutive sentences cannot be imposed without at least one aggravator,” Vaidik wrote.

“While I agree with the majority that the challenged aggravator is proper and that therefore Crouse’s sentence is ultimately not illegal, Crouse’s theory was at least plausible, so he was correctly allowed to pursue this belated appeal.”

The case is Jay Paul Crouse, Jr. v. State of Indiana, 19A-CR-3008