Dickson, J.
Leigh Jennings was found brutally bludgeoned to death in her kitchen. She died from blunt force head trauma, and her injuries were consistent with blows from the cast iron skillet and pepper mill found hanging in her pantry with blood drips on the wall behind. Calculated from her body decomposition rate, March 29, 2012, was the probable date of death. . . . On May 9, police discovered the defendant on his bed, covered in blood from an apparent suicide attempt. The defendant had left a suicide note written to his son, emphasizing his financial distress and declaring that he had nothing to do with Jennings’s murder. . . . .
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On appeal, the defendant contends that evidence of his suicide attempt should have been excluded because (1) it was not relevant and (2) the danger of unfair prejudice substantially out-weighed its probative value.
As to relevancy, the defendant contends that the evidence does not show any link, other than timing, between the suicide attempt and the charged offenses of robbery and murder. He argues that the attempt was not relevant to a consciousness of guilt but rather showed that the defendant was in the midst of financial crises and that the pressure of his mounting debt “became the impetus behind his suicide attempt.” Appellant’s Br. at 41. This asserted motive was arguably supported by the accompanying suicide note, in which the defendant expressly denied that he killed Leigh Jennings and appeared to direct that his life insurance proceeds be used to repay “people who trusted me with their money.” State’s Ex. 185, Volume of Ex. at 799. The State responds that the defendant’s financial problems were the motivation for the defendant’s robbery and murder in this case and that the suicide attempt was relevant as evidence of a guilty con-science and as evidence of the defendant’s financial stress.
The defense acknowledges the absence of Indiana case law directly on point and that “other jurisdictions generally do allow evidence of suicide attempts.” Appellant’s Br. at 38. One reason other states employ for allowing this type of evidence, the defendant admits, is that many “states acknowledge the general rule that ‘evidence the accused attempted to commit suicide is relevant as a circumstance tending . . . to show consciousness of guilt.'” Id. (quoting 1 Wharton’s Criminal Evidence § 159 (14th ed. 1985)). The defendant nevertheless directs our attention to two Indiana cases in which suicide attempt evidence was excluded, Cardine v. State, 475 N.E.2d 696 (Ind. 1985), and Kien v. State, 782 N.E.2d 398 (Ind. Ct. App. 2003), trans. denied. In addition, the defendant cites cases from other states that caution courts to carefully consider the probative value of attempted suicide evidence. See State v. Onorato, 762 A.2d 858 (Vt. 2000) and State v. Mann, 625 A.2d 1102 (N.J. 1993).
In both Cardine and Kien, the exclusion of suicide attempt evidence was fact-sensitive and did not announce a general proscription. In Cardine, the defendant was seeking to admit evidence of his attempted suicide in an effort to “demonstrate[] his mental imbalance prior to the crime.” 475 N.E.2d at 699. Noting that the defendant was arguing self-defense, however, the Court observed that under an insanity defense, attempted suicide evidence may be probative, but that as to a claim of self-defense, the “suicide attempt, which occurred two months prior to the offense, was too remote and had little if any relationship to [the defendant’s] defense.” Id. In Kien, the Court of Appeals found that the admittance of two suicide notes was improper because the State only offered the evidence to impeach the defendant on a collateral issue. 782 N.E.2d at 409. Neither Cardine nor Kien hold that attempted suicide evidence is generally inadmissible as being irrelevant in Indiana. Instead, both cases are a rather straightforward application of Indiana Evidence Rule 401: “Evidence is relevant if: (a) it has a tendency to make any fact more or less probable than it would be without the evidence; and (b) the fact is of consequence in deter-mining the action.”
In addition to its relevancy argument (that the suicide attempt reflects his acute financial desperation and thus his possible motive for the robbery and murder), the State also argues that it showed the defendant’s consciousness of guilt. Other than the suicide attempt itself, the State points to no other evidentiary facts that suggest the defendant’s consciousness of guilt was a factor in his attempted suicide. In fact, in his suicide note, the defendant expressly and repeatedly denied killing Leigh Jennings. We decline to find that the mere existence of an attempted suicide, without more, is relevant evidence of a person’s guilty conscience about committing a charged crime, especially a charged crime which the person expressly disavows when the suicide is attempted. Because we conclude that the attempted suicide evidence was relevant to the issue of motive for the ensuing robbery and murder, however, its tenuous use as evidence of consciousness of guilt does not undermine its admissibility.
Rush, C.J., and Rucker, David, and Massa, JJ., concur.