Massa, J.
A state statute sets a deadline for filing a notice of insanity as a defense in a criminal case. A court may, however, upon a showing of good cause, allow a defendant to file a late notice.
The appellant in this case asks the Court to find the trial court abused its discretion by denying her belated insanity defense request. As she failed to provide good cause for her extensive delay, we decline to do so. We also reject her arguments that the evidence presented was unreliable and inadmissible under the Protected Person Statute and that her sentence is inappropriate in light of the nature of the crime and character of the offender. Accordingly, we affirm the trial court.
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Tillett argues that the trial court abused its discretion in denying her belated request to assert an insanity defense. Under Indiana Code Section 35-36-2-1, a defendant in a felony case must file a notice of intent to assert an insanity defense no later than 20 days before the omnibus date, or 10 days before the omnibus date for misdemeanor charges. “However, in the interest of justice and upon a showing of good cause, the court may permit the filing to be made at any time before commencement of the trial.” Id. (Emphasis added).
While the statute grants a trial court discretion to permit filing of a notice of insanity defense at any time before commencement of a trial, “such discretion is exercisable upon a showing of good cause by a defendant who has missed the deadline.” Eveler v. State, 524 N.E.2d 9, 11 (Ind. 1988). The statute itself does not define “good cause,” leaving the term to judicial interpretation.
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The trial court did not abuse its discretion in denying her belated motion. While we agree there was good cause for her missing the original statutory deadline, as she had not been psychologically evaluated at that point, we find no good cause for the significant delay after she had been seen.
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The trial court rejected the defense on the grounds that the defense was not timely filed, that there was no good cause for the extensive delay, and that it would not be in the interest of justice to allow it. We agree.
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Tillett contends the trial court abused its discretion by admitting her children’s forensic interviews into evidence under the Protected Person Statute. More specifically, she argues the children’s statements made during their forensic interviews are inadmissible because they lacked sufficient indicia of reliability under subsection 6(f)(1) (requiring “that the time, content, and circumstances of the statement or videotape provide sufficient indications of reliability”). We disagree.
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… [T]here has been no suggestion of any motive to fabricate. Between telling her teacher about the abuse and her forensic interview at the Child Advocacy Center, E.W. spent the night with her maternal grandmother who was told, as part of a safety plan, not to discuss the allegations with the children. Their maternal grandmother did not speak to them about the matter prior to the children being interviewed. At their interviews, both children used age-appropriate language which shows their statements were less likely to have been fabricated or coached. Their maternal grandmother also later testified at trial that E.W. was seven years old and able to differentiate between a truth and a lie. While I.B. has had some learning difficulties, during interviews she was able to demonstrate physically how she was molested. The children’s disclosures were consistent with the spontaneous disclosure E.W made to her teacher, which weighs in favor of it being accurately repeated. Prior to each interview, the children did not have any lengthy or stressful interviews on this matter; their conversations with other adults at most lasted a few minutes.
The testimony of E.W.’s first-grade teacher recounting her statements and the videotape interview exhibited sufficient indications of reliability required by the Protected Person Statute. Based on the record before us, we do not find the trial court abused its discretion by finding the statements of these children reliable and therefore, admissible under the statute.
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Tillett further argues that her sentence is inappropriate in light of the nature of the offense and her character. She asks us to revise her sentence. We decline to do so.
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Tillett has failed to demonstrate that her sentence is inappropriate in light of the specific factors considered by the trial court that distinguished her offenses from those committed by defendants in other cases. In short, her sentence is not inappropriate and should not be revised.
Tillett has shown no good cause for her belated insanity defense motion and no error in the admission of evidence or inappropriateness of her sentence. We therefore affirm the trial court.
Rush, C.J., and Slaughter and Molter, JJ., concur.
Goff, J., concurs in parts II and III and dissents in part I with separate opinion.
Goff, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part.
I take no issue with, and thus concur in, the Court’s holdings in Parts II and III of its opinion. However, I respectfully dissent from the Court’s holding that Tillett failed to show good cause to justify her belated insanity defense.
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The State itself acknowledges that Tillett may “not have [had] enough information to consider pursuing an insanity defense until the final competency report was filed in January 2024.” Pet. to Trans. at 15–16. And while the State insists that defense counsel had “multiple opportunities after competency restoration to address the issue with Tillett and the trial court well in advance of the trial date,” id. at 16, the fact is that defense counsel had made clear his intentions of raising an insanity defense several weeks prior to filing the belated notice, App. Vol 2, p. 201 (acknowledging that counsel “had made the State and the Court aware” of the pending motion “sometime [in] the weeks prior” to filing). So, it’s not as if the trial court was exercising its discretion to eliminate the “element of surprise,” as the State suggests. See Reply in Support of Pet. to Trans. at 5.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, Tillett’s mental health was clearly an issue from the outset of her prosecution. As such, the “assertion of an insanity defense could not have come as a shock to the State,” and any prejudice it may have sustained would have been minimal, especially given the children’s exemption from testifying as witnesses under the Protected Persons Statute. See Zamani v. State, 33 N.E.3d 1130, 1144 (Ind. Ct. App. 2015) (Robb, J., dissenting), trans. denied.
For the reasons above, I concur in the Court’s holdings in Parts II and III of its opinion but dissent from the Court’s holding in Part I that Tillett failed to show good cause to justify her belated insanity defense.