C.L.Y. v. State

816 N.E.2d 894, 2004 Ind. App. LEXIS 2072
CourtIndiana Court of Appeals
DecidedOctober 27, 2004
DocketNo. 71A03-0311-JV-460
StatusPublished
Cited by13 cases

This text of 816 N.E.2d 894 (C.L.Y. v. State) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Indiana Court of Appeals primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
C.L.Y. v. State, 816 N.E.2d 894, 2004 Ind. App. LEXIS 2072 (Ind. Ct. App. 2004).

Opinions

OPINION

VAIDIK, Judge.

Case Summary

C.L.Y. appeals his adjudication as a delinquent child for committing acts that would constitute Child Molesting as a Class C felony and Attempted Child Molesting as a Class B felony if committed by an adult.1 We find that it was not an abuse of discretion for the trial court to order C.L.Y. to remain in detention pending his fact-finding hearing and to deny C.L.Y.'s motion for continuance. We affirm because even assuming that the photographic array from which the victim made an out-of-court identification is im-permissibly suggestive, the evidence is nonetheless sufficient to sustain C.L.Y.'s adjudication as a delinquent child.

Facts and Procedural History

According to the facts most favorable to the judgment, the following events occurred at approximately 7:00 p.m. on April 22, 2008. As eight-year-old A.B. was riding her bicycle in the alley behind the house where she lives with her grandmother, two white teenage brothers who live in a green house-one of whom was later identified as C.L.Y.-yanked A.B. off her bicycle and pulled her into an inoperable van parked in their father's backyard, adjacent to the alley. Then, one at a time, the brothers-whom A.B. referred to in her testimony as "Michael" and "Plain old boy"-sexually assaulted her. Specifically, "Plain old boy," the older brother, stood outside the van while "Michael" removed A.B.'s clothing, touched her vagina with his hand and penis, and "humped" her. [897]*897Tr. p. 281. According to A.B.'s testimony, "Michael" ejaculated on "the couch" and her abdomen. Id. at 232. Then "Plain old boy" touched her vagina with his penis but did not ejaculate. A.B. testified further that after she said no "really loud," "Plain old boy" stopped what he was doing and threw her out of the van's broken window. Id. at 245. A.B. then returned home.

The next morning at school, A.B.'s teacher Collette Couture observed that A.B. was behaving strangely: in addition to asking to use the restroom four times in less than three hours, A.B. was "holding her vaginal area" and "walk[ing] very gingerly." Id. at 87, 88. After lunch, A.B. told Couture what had happened, and Couture took A.B. to the principal's office. The principal contacted A.B.'s grandmother, and after social worker Maryann West drove A.B. home, A.B.'s grandmother and West took A.B. to the emergency room. Once there, medical personnel performed a full examination of A.B.-paying particular attention to her genitalia and anal area- and took swabs to place in a sexual assault kit. Emergency physician Phillip R. Kav-anagh, who performed the examination of A.B., testified at trial that he did not observe any "signos of trauma" on her body, such as bruises, scratches, or bleeding. Id. at 583.

On April 25, 2008, A.B. was taken to the CASIE Center, where she participated in a videotaped interview conducted by social worker Angie Seott. During this interview, A.B. described the incident and revealed that her assailants were two white teenage brothers.

Shortly thereafter, Detective Cynthia Eastman of the South Bend Police Department was assigned to the case and, after viewing the videotaped interview with A.B., began developing suspects. After learning that several white teenage brothers-T.Y., J.Y., and C.LY.-live in the house behind which the van was parked, Detective Eastman obtained photographs of the boys from their school identification cards. All three of these photos were included in a photo array along with three other random photographs, taken from school yearbooks, depicting white males of the same age range and general appearance as C.L.Y. and his brothers. However, the young men in the yearbook photographs are wearing collared shirts and ties and two of the three are sporting blazers and smiling broadly; in contrast, the student identification card photographs are grainy and somewhat blurry and the brothers, including C.L.Y., are faced forward, expressionless, wearing white t-shirts. On May 8, 2004, when Detective Eastman presented this photo array to A.B. at her school, A.B. studied the photos intently, "visibly started shaking," and then-in "probably less than a minute"pointed to photos Number 2 (J.Y.) and Number 5 (C.L.Y.). Id. at 825.

On May 12, Sergeant Michael Suth of the South Bend Police Department processed the van for evidence, using a UV light to examine the exterior and interior of the van. Sergeant Suth then used an acid phosphate test on the areas inside the van that fluoreseed under the UV light; in two areas inside the van, the tests were positive for the presence of semen.

On May 19, the State filed a two-count Petition Alleging Delinquency charging C.L.Y. with Child Molesting as a Class B felony if committed by an adult and Child Molesting as a Class C felony if committed by an adult.2 At an initial hearing held on [898]*898May 30, C.L.Y. entered a denial, and the trial court determined that C.L.Y. should be detained pending trial.3 Trial was set for June 12.

On June 10, the trial court held a hearing at which C.L.Y.'s counsel complained that he had not yet received from the State the potentially-exculpatory test results of the physical evidence, including the sexual assault kit, a blood sample taken from C.L.Y., and the upholstery from the van's interior believed to contain semen stains. The State responded that the samples had been sent to the Indiana State Police Laboratory for DNA testing but it would be virtually impossible to get the results back before the trial date of June 12. The State also asserted that it was ready to proceed to trial without the results from the physical evidence. The trial court decided to "view this as a failure in discovery, not as a request for continuance. ..." Appellant's App. p. 30.

On June 12, 2008, the trial court held a detention hearing at which the parties discussed the implications of the discovery problem with regard to Indiana Code § 31-37-11-2, which requires the trial court to hold a fact-finding hearing within twenty days of the filing of a petition. Specifically, C.L.Y. asserted that although he could not proceed to trial without the test results of the physical evidence the State had not yet provided through discovery, it would be "fundamentally unfair" for him to waive his right to a speedy trial because of an inability to obtain evidence the State had failed to provide. Id. at 28. The State responded that the evidence was at the Indiana State Police Laboratory and would not be ready for approximately six weeks. The State also filed a Motion to Reconsider asserting that (1) C.L.Y. had not adequately established that the physical evidence would prove to be exculpatory, and (2) the State had provided C.L.Y. with all of the evidence the State intended to present at trial. The trial court determined that the delay caused by C.L.Y.'s discovery request-the previously-dubbed "failure in discovery"-was attributable to C.L.Y. Id. at 44-46.

The fact-finding hearing commenced on August 12. At the outset, C.L.Y. orally requested a motion for continuance in order to submit the physical evidence to independent analysis at public expense. The DNA results had been released on July 28, but C.L.Y.'s counsel had left for vacation shortly thereafter, and C.L.Y. had decided the night before trial to pursue further analysis of the physical evidence. The State argued that to grant a continuance would be a "huge imposition" upon eight-year-old A.B., who was present to testify as a witness. Id. at 65.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
816 N.E.2d 894, 2004 Ind. App. LEXIS 2072, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/cly-v-state-indctapp-2004.