To be classified as a serious violent felon, a defendant must have been convicted of a statutory listed felony. If a defendant’s qualifying felony conviction is reduced to a misdemeanor by virtue of the AMS statute, a defendant would no longer qualify as a serious violent felon.
Criminal
Brown v. State, No. 23A-CR-330, __ N.E.3d __ (Ind. Ct. App., May 10, 2024).
A twenty-one-year-old falls into the jurisdictional gap our Indiana Supreme Court identified in D.P. and Neukam. While statutes that became effective on July 1, 2023, cured this jurisdictional gap, retroactive application of these statutes violate a defendant’s right under the United States Constitution to be free of ex post facto laws.
Lane v. State, No. 24S-CR-150, __N.E.3d __ (Ind., May 2, 2024).
Sentencing courts should consider the full range of available options, including community-based rehabilitation programs, for defendants who commit low-level offenses but pose little continuing danger to others. However, to ensure public safety, courts should consider extended jail sentences for low-level offenders with a history of violence who pose a continuing threat to others. Reviewing courts will defer to a trial court’s considered assessment that a person is too dangerous to receive anything but a lengthy executed sentence.
Dunn v. State, No. 24S-CR-123, __N.E.3d __ (Ind., Apr. 10, 2024).
Courts should take great caution in using the phrase “and/or,” especially in jury instructions, because it is ambiguous and potentially imprecise. Where wording permits two contradictory interpretations, one correct and one erroneous, the jury may be misled as to the law.
G.W. v. State, No. 23S-JV-246, __N.E.3d __ (Ind., Apr. 10, 2024).
When a juvenile court fails to enter the requisite findings of fact in its dispositional order, an appellate court should neither affirm nor reverse. Instead, the proper remedy is to remand the case under Ind. App. R. 66(C)(8) while holding the appeal in abeyance.