As long as the defendant bears no active responsibility in his early release, he or she is entitled to credit while erroneously at liberty as if still incarcerated. However, the defendant’s projected release date serves as a firm backstop. When it discovers an error, the State must petition a trial court to recommit the defendant to resume his or her sentence if, after calculating credit time, any sentence remains to be served
Criminal
State v. Jones, 21S-CR-50, __ N.E.3d __ (Ind., June 22, 2021).
An informant’s identity is inherently revealed through their physical appearance at a face-to-face interview. Thus, when a defendant requests such an interview, the State has met its threshold burden to show the informer’s privilege applies.
Brown v. State, 20A-CR-2261, __ N.E.3d __ (Ind. Ct. App., June 24, 2021).
Administrative punishment rendered by the Department of Correction does not preclude a subsequent criminal prosecution for the same conduct.
State v. Diego, 21S-CR-285, __ N.E.3d __ (Ind., June 9, 2021).
Police may not interrogate a person in custody without proper Miranda warnings or else the State risks having those custodial statements suppressed in a criminal trial. However, not every station house interview implicates Miranda. Miranda warnings are only required when a person is in custody; when a person’s’ freedom of movement is curtailed to a level associated with formal arrest and when he or she is under the same inherently coercive pressures in the police station as those at issue in Miranda v. Arizona.
State v. Timbs, 20S-MI-289, __ N.E.3d __ (Ind., June 10, 2021).
The excessiveness test announced in State v. Timbs, 134 N.E.3d 12 (Ind. 2019), has two dimensions: instrumentality and proportionality. Instrumentality is not at issue in here because Timbs acknowledged that he used the forfeited vehicle to traffic heroin. As to proportionality, courts must look to whether the forfeiture is grossly disproportionate to the gravity of the offenses and the claimant’s culpability. This inquiry turns on three factors: the culpability of the claimant for misusing the forfeited property, the harshness of the forfeiture, and the gravity of the claimant’s underlying offenses.