Trial court should have dismissed, rather than denied, defendant’s habeas petition that was in substance an unauthorized successive PCR.
Criminal
Roar v. State, No. 49A02-1506-CR-506 , ___ N.E.3d ___ (Ind. Ct. App., April 21, 2016).
Conditional threat to victim (that “if I came back on the property[] he’d kill me”) supported conviction for intimidation (disagreeing with C.L. v. State, 2 N.E.3d 798, 801 (Ind. Ct. App. 2014), trans. not sought and Causey v. State, 45 N.E.2d 1239 (Ind. Ct. App. 2015), trans. not sought).
Horton v. State, No. 79S02-1510-CR-628, ___ N.E.3d ___ (Ind., April 21, 2016).
Defendant’s personal waiver of second-phase jury trial was required; counsel could not waive it on defendant’s behalf, even though defendant had just been through first phase of bifurcated trial.
Trial court did not abuse its discretion in taking judicial notice of prior case file as evidence of defendant’s prior conviction, because file was readily and publicly available and cause number was repeatedly an unambiguously identified on the record; however, better practice would have been to formally enter the relevant documents into the record.
Tinker v. State, No. 10A01-1507-CR-999, ___ N.E.3d ___ (Ind. Ct. App., April 22, 2016).
Speedy-trial objection was not untimely; defendant had an obligation to object only if, during the 365-day period under Crim. R. 4(C), the court scheduled a new trial outside that period.
Gibson v. State, No. 22S00-1206-DP-360, ___ N.E.3d ___ (Ind., April 12, 2016).
Allowing State to amend death-penalty charging information shortly before trial—changing the aggravator from having “committed” another murder to having “been convicted of” another murder—was not error.