Vaidik, J.
In Indiana, when a defendant is charged with a crime against another person, the victim’s identity is a material element of the offense that the State must specifically allege in the charging information and then prove beyond a reasonable doubt. These requirements serve to place the defendant on notice of the exact crime being charged and to protect the defendant against double jeopardy—a subsequent prosecution for the same offense.
Here, the State charged Gregory Freeman with attempted murder, alleging that he shot a man named Lawon Browning. Browning was excluded from testifying because he refused to appear for a deposition, and at the bench trial no witness identified the victim as Lawon Browning. Still, the trial court found Freeman guilty of the lesser-included offense of Level 5 felony battery with a deadly weapon. Concluding that the State failed to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Lawon Browning was the victim of the shooting, we must reverse that conviction.
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Freeman doesn’t challenge the sufficiency of the evidence that he shot another person. Rather, he argues that the State was required, but failed, to prove that he shot the person named in the charging information, Lawon Browning. For a crime against a person, the State must both allege and prove the identity of the victim.
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The State argues that the victim’s identity was not an element it was required to prove. It notes that the battery statute requires only the rude, insolent, or angry touching of “another person.” Ind. Code § 35-42-2-1(c). But the State simply ignores Freeman’s citation to our Supreme Court’s holding in Leonard. That case involved the murder statute, which, like the battery statute, requires that the offense be committed against “another human being.” I.C. § 35-42-1-1. The Court nonetheless held that the victims’ identities were material elements of the offense. That holding controls the analysis here.
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The State is correct that proving a victim’s identity doesn’t always require direct evidence of the victim’s name. In Davis v. State, 796 N.E.2d 798 (Ind. Ct. App. 2003), trans. denied, a woman named Lucy Scott reported that the defendant had attacked her while she was holding her three-year-old daughter, D.S. The State charged the defendant with domestic battery as to Scott and battery as to D.S. At trial, D.S.’s name was never mentioned, but Officer Susan Reidenbach testified that Scott was holding her three-year-old daughter at the time of the attack. The defendant was found guilty and appealed, arguing that the evidence was insufficient to identify the victim of the battery. We disagreed, explaining:
[T]he evidence is sufficiently clear to establish that the charging information relating to D.S., a three-year-old child, refers to the same three-year-old child who Officer Reidenbach testified was being held by Scott when she was attacked and thrown onto the bed. Officer Reidenbach also established that the three-year-old child who Scott was holding was Scott’s own daughter. This evidence was sufficient for the trial court to conclude that D.S. was the child who was being held by Scott and who was injured in the altercation.
Id. at 806.
Here, though, no such identifying information about the victim was admitted into evidence. While multiple witnesses identified the shooting victim in photos, their testimony didn’t link the photos to the person named in the charging information and the BMV registration.
Because the State failed to prove the identity of the victim beyond a reasonable doubt, we must reverse Freeman’s battery conviction. We affirm Freeman’s conviction and one-year sentence for carrying a handgun without a license.
Affirmed in part and reversed in part.
Weissmann, J., and Foley, J., concur.