When motorist calmly complied with officer’s commands, although motorist had yelled at officer earlier, officer’s pointing firearm at and handcuffing of motorist transformed a permissible investigative stop into an illegal arrest without probable cause.
Halferty v. State, No. 20A03-0910-CR-475, __ N.E.2d __ (Ind. Ct. App., July 9, 2010)
Testimony that cooking ephedrine/pseudoephedrine would “usually” and “generally” reduce it to methamphetamine at a 70 percent ratio but that ratio could have been as low as 50 percent was insufficient to prove defendant was manufacturing more than three grams of methamphetamine so as to support an A felony conviction.
Taylor v. State, No. 71A04-1001-PC-6, __ N.E.2d __ (Ind. Ct. App., July 9, 2010)
Officers’ warrantless search of home to determine whether there was an additional occupant who could have fired a weapon was a valid protective sweep.
Sample v. State, No. 45S03-1006-CR-338, __ N.E.2d __ (Ind., June 30, 2010)
Error in habitual offender instruction that jury “must” find habitual status if it finds priors proven was compounded, not avoided, by a “law and the facts” instruction which told jury the instructions were its “best source in determining what the law is.”
Duran v. State, No. 45S03-0910-CR-430, __ N.E.2d __ (Ind., June 30, 2010)
An arrest warrant confers limited authority to enter a dwelling in which the suspect lives when there is reason to believe the suspect is within; when police knew only the building in which the suspect lived, an anonymous bystander’s direction to a specific apartment was not sufficiently reliable to confer the required “reason to believe” for a forced entry.