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A defendant’s testimony about a prior unrelated felony was irrelevant to his habitual offender trial, a sharply divided Indiana Supreme Court has ruled, upholding the exclusion of that testimony.
Appellant-defendant Christopher Harris was “hanging out” with a woman who resided in Indianapolis in the summer of 2019. He became suspicious that she was seeing another man, so Harris approached the man as he was sitting in his car.
Harris pointed a handgun at the man and accused him of “messing with” the woman. He then fired two shots and swung the gun at the man’s head, took money and a gold chain from him, and ordered him to get out of the car before firing several more shots into it. The man was left bleeding.
Harris was subsequently charged with Level 3 felony robbery while armed with a deadly weapon, Level 4 felony unlawful possession of a firearm by a serious violent felon, Level 5 felony battery with a deadly weapon and Level 6 felony criminal recklessness while armed with a deadly weapon.
The state also sought a sentence enhancement, alleging Harris was a habitual offender because he had two prior unrelated felony convictions.
Harris waived trial by jury and the state dismissed the unlawful possession charge. He was then found guilty at a bench trial of robbery and battery, but not criminal recklessness.
However, Harris did elect for a jury trial on the habitual offender enhancement.
At the jury trial, Harris testified to his age when his present and prior convictions had occurred.
Outside the presence of the jury, Harris proffered testimony that, at the time of the robbery, he had recently been diagnosed with PTSD and was taking unfamiliar medication. He also wanted to testify to his plans of rehabilitation and explain the circumstances of a 2002 robbery conviction, including that he was 19 and in serious legal trouble for the first time and didn’t realize he could have taken the case to trial, rather than taking a plea agreement.
The trial court excluded the testimony as a collateral attack on a prior conviction.
The jury found Harris to be a habitual offender and the trial court sentenced him to an aggregate term of 27 years, which included the 15-year habitual offender enhancement.
On appeal to the Court of Appeals of Indiana, Harris argued that the exclusion of his testimony violated Article 1, Sections 19 and 13 of the Indiana Constitution, as well as federal guarantees of the right to testify in his own defense.
The high court granted transfer in its Thursday opinion.
At the Indiana Supreme Court, Harris again argued that Article 1, Section 19 of the Indiana Constitution gave jury the discretion to decide if a defendant is a habitual offender even if the unrelated convictions have been proven.
In ruling that Article 1, Section 19 applies to a habitual offender jury trial, Justice Christopher Goff wrote, “This provision does not require the legislature to entrust sentence enhancement status decisions to juries. … But, when a jury trial is held, the jury must be allowed to perform its constitutionally mandated functions. Thus, in the habitual offender phase, the jury may determine both whether the defendant has the convictions alleged and whether those convictions make the defendant a habitual offender as a matter of law.”
The high court also ruled that the amended habitual offender statute does not strip the jury of its law-determining role, although the justices did find the statute was ambiguous.
Applying the rule in Sims v. United States Fidelity & Guar. Co., 782 N.E.2d 345 (Ind. 2003), Goff wrote, “Indiana Code subsection 35-50-2-8(h) requires the jury, in reaching its verdict, to determine the existence of the requisite convictions. But this does not preclude what Article 1, Section 19 demands, namely that the jury be allowed to determine the ultimate issue of habitual offender status.”
Next, looking at Harris’ testimony, the high court held that only evidence tending to prove or disprove a defendant’s convictions is relevant to habitual offender status.
“To allow the circumstances of prior convictions to come in would contradict the purpose of giving the jury the right to determine habitual offender status,” Goff wrote.
Looking specifically at Harris’ case, the court said he wasn’t entitled to present the circumstances of his crimes in an effort to persuade the jury to show mercy.
“We agree with the trial court that none of the testimony Harris proffered was relevant. He attempted to testify about the circumstances of two of his crimes, namely his present robbery conviction and a prior, unrelated robbery conviction. As to his present conviction, Harris would have told the jury about his PTSD, medication difficulties, and intent to rehabilitate himself,” Goff wrote. “Because this testimony could not serve to disprove the existence of Harris’s unrelated convictions, the trial court properly excluded it as irrelevant. And, by waiving a jury trial in the guilt phase, Harris turned down his opportunity for a jury to hear the circumstances of his crimes of conviction.”
Harris also argued that various federal and state constitutional protections entitled him to testify in his own defense.
But “(b)ecause testimony to the circumstances of a defendant’s crimes is irrelevant to the habitual offender status determination, Harris had no constitutional right to present it,” Goff wrote.
The case was remanded to the trial court for attachment of the habitual offender sentence enhancement to the sentence for robbery.
Justice Derek Molter concurred in part and in the judgment with a separate opinion, which Justice Mark Massa joined.
According to Molter, “Our Court’s precedents establish that the trial court properly excluded Harris’ proffered evidence as irrelevant.”
But he also wrote, “Now, it may be difficult to reconcile the conclusion in the lead opinion that Article 1, Section 19 applies to the habital offender phase with our previous conclusion that the General Assembly can exclude the jury from that phase completely,” citing Smith v. State, 825 N.E.2d 783, 786 (Ind. 2005). “… Law in this area has long been tangled, and I worry that by unnecessarily pulling on this string we are tightening rather than loosening the knot.”
Chief Justice Loretta Rush concurred in part and dissented in part with a separate opinion, which Justice Geoffrey Slaughter partially joined.
Rush concurred that under Article 1, Section 19, the jury in a habitual offender proceeding must decide two issues: whether the defendant has been convicted of the requisite number of prior unrelated felonies, and whether, based on those convictions, they should be given habitual offender status.
But she disagreed that the only evidence relevant to the two issues is that tending to prove or disprove the necessary unrelated convictions. She also dissented from the conclusion that all testimony to the circumstances of a defendant’s crimes is irrelevant to the habitual offender status determination.
Rush opined that the framers and ratifiers of the Indiana Constitution intended an expansive role for juries in criminal cases.
“In the years following the convention, our precedent routinely recognized the broad scope of a jury’s authority under Article 1, Section 19 even though the Court eventually began to impose limitations,” she wrote.
Rush also found that following the adoption of Article 1, Section 19, the court consistently recognized the provision’s importance and scope but ultimately curtailed the jury’s authority relating to instructions it receives.
“It was against this historical backdrop that we began considering the application of Article 1, Section 19 in habitual-offender proceedings before a jury,” she said.
Next, she found that Article 1, Section 19 requires the jury to make separate determinations in a habitual-offender proceeding.
“Yet, three of my colleagues have decided to restrict the jury’s constitutional right by prohibiting any evidence relevant to the status determination. As our precedent has made clear, their position not only resurrects long-repudiated reasoning, but it also dilutes — if not nullifies — the jury’s constitutional right in habitual-offender proceedings,” she wrote.
Rush also found that evidence is relevant in a habitual offender proceeding if it assists the jury in making either of its constitutionally required determinations.
“The stipulation established the existence of the requisite prior convictions, thus entitling the trial court to exclude Harris’s proposed testimony that collaterally attacked one of the convictions. But Harris’s testimony also included circumstances closely related to the primary felony offense. And because the jury was empaneled solely for Harris’s habitual-offender proceeding, it did not have the opportunity to hear any evidence about that offense,” the chief wrote.
Finally, Rush said she would hold that the trial court abused its discretion in prohibiting the jury from hearing Harris’s testimony about the primary felony. She wrote that she would also remand the case to the trial court for a new habitual-offender proceeding.
Slaughter also dissented with a separate opinion.
Slaughter wrote that he doesn’t support addressing constitutional questions in a case decided on other, non-constitutional grounds.
“But in a future case, I am willing to consider applying article 1, section 19 outside the habitual-offender context. I am also open to limiting this provision’s application if the legislature elects to remove juries from the habitual-offender determination,” he wrote.
The case is Christopher Jerome Harris v. State of Indiana, 23S-CR-165.
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