Sobolewski v. State

889 N.E.2d 849, 2008 Ind. App. LEXIS 1405, 2008 WL 2654314
CourtIndiana Court of Appeals
DecidedJuly 8, 2008
Docket63A01-0802-CR-58
StatusPublished
Cited by20 cases

This text of 889 N.E.2d 849 (Sobolewski 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
Sobolewski v. State, 889 N.E.2d 849, 2008 Ind. App. LEXIS 1405, 2008 WL 2654314 (Ind. Ct. App. 2008).

Opinion

OPINION

BROWN, Judge.

Victor Sobolewski appeals his conviction and sentence for child exploitation as a class C felony 1 enhanced by his status as an habitual offender. 2 Sobolewski raises four issues, which we revise and restate as:

I. Whether the trial court abused its discretion by denying his requests for a continuance;
II. Whether the prosecutor committed prosecutorial misconduct;
III. Whether he was denied a fair trial as a result of certain remarks made by the prosecutor; and
IV. Whether his sentence is inappropriate in light of the nature of the offense and the character of the offender.

We affirm.

The relevant facts follow. S.H. was born on January 30, 1991. In August 2006, S.H. began working at a fast food restaurant, where she met Sobolewski, born on February 13, 1970, and also employed there. They later had sex. On February 7, 2007, Sobolewski called the police because he was afraid that “two gentlemen ... were going to start a fight with him at his residence.” Transcript at 66. Petersburg Police Department Officer *853 Steve Nash, responding to the call, found S.H. with Sobolewski at his residence, although it was a “school day.” Id. at 62. S.H. seemed “giddy,” and a breath test administered to her came back positive for alcohol. Id. at 68. She was sent to a juvenile detention center for one week and then placed on house arrest. Sobolewski was arrested, but a friend bonded him out of jail.

Shortly thereafter, Sobolewski was arrested for an unrelated offense, and S.H. spent $3,500 of her own money bonding him out of jail. Without her father’s knowledge, she then let Sobolewski in through the back door of her father’s house, and he stayed in her bedroom for several days. Using S.H.’s digital camera, Sobolewski took some pictures, including a picture of S.H. performing fellatio on him. On March 25, 2007, the police received information that Sobolewski was violating a court order by being with S.H. Peters-burg Sheriffs Deputy Brad Jenkins and other officers went to the house of S.H.’s father and informed him that he had an intruder. They then found Sobolewski and S.H. in bed together with marijuana and alcohol in plain view.

On March 28, 2007, the State charged Sobolewski with: (1) Count I, child exploitation as a class C felony; (2) Count II, criminal trespass as a class A misdemean- or; (3) Count III, possession of marijuana as a class A misdemeanor; and (4) Count IV, possession of paraphernalia as a class A misdemeanor. The State also filed an habitual offender enhancement.

On October 22, 2007, the first day of the jury trial, the State filed a motion in limine to exclude any reference to a previous trial of Sobolewski under a different cause number, and the trial court granted the motion. The trial court granted the State’s motion to dismiss Counts II, III, and IV with prejudice.

The next day, S.H. testified that Sobo-lewski had two tattoos, one on his chest and another on his leg. The prosecutor displayed some of the pictures found on S.H.’s digital camera, and S.H. testified that they had been taken over several days while Sobolewski was staying in her bedroom. 3 When S.H. was shown the picture of herself performing fellatio on a male, she testified that the picture had been taken in her room on the night Sobolewski was arrested, that she was performing fellatio on Sobolewski in the picture, and that Sobolewski had taken the picture himself.

On direct examination, Sobolewski denied that he was the male in that picture and further denied having ever used S.H.’s camera. Sobolewski stated that he had five tattoos, including a tattoo on his penis of an ‘X’, which, he asserted, had been given to him one and one-half years earlier by a former girlfriend using a sewing needle and “Indian ink.” Id. at 281. He claimed that the penis in the photograph could not be his because it did not bear a tattoo of an X.’.

At one point, Sobolewski testified in narrative form about his previous criminal convictions and complained that he had “lost everything” and been “slandered in the paper” since his incarceration. Id. at 293. When he mentioned his “last trial,” the prosecutor objected that this testimony violated the trial court’s order excluding any reference to an earlier trial of Sobo-lewski under a different cause number, addressing the trial court as follows:

*854 Look, I’ve tried to give [Sobolewski’s attorney] all the leeway in the world. Alright. I have tried for two ... days. He has done nothing but ask clearly objectionable questions, trying to harass witnesses, make objections without knowing the rules, be totally amateurish and then he puts his client up to violate the Court’s order.

Id. at 294-295. The trial court sustained the objection and, after a sidebar conference off the record, admonished the jury. The jury then left the courtroom, and So-bolewski’s attorney moved for a mistrial “on the basis that the State ... challenged the abilities of defense counsel.” Id. at 296. The trial court denied the motion but instructed the parties to “refrain from making any direct comments as to other counsel.” Id. When the jury returned, the trial court admonished the jury that it was to disregard any statement made by Sobo-lewski about a prior jury trial. The parties agreed to have pictures taken of Sobo-lewski’s ‘X’ tattoo.

On the third day of the trial, three pictures of Sobolewski’s penis with the ‘X’ tattoo were admitted into evidence. On cross examination, the prosecutor asked Sobolewski whether he had told the police about the tattoo during the seven months between his arrest and trial, and Sobolew-ski responded that he had not. The prosecutor asked, “[Yjou’re saying for seven [ ] months, you could have proved your innocence but you decided to wait till now?” Id. at 346. Sobolewski agreed. The prosecutor moved to admit into evidence Sobo-lewski’s pretrial proof of compliance with discovery order stating that he did not intend to present any defenses at the time of trial. Sobolewski objected, arguing that the document was hearsay, unfairly prejudicial, and that admission of the document would violate his constitutional “protection to ... refuse to take the stand if he wants to do so.” Id. at 329. Overruling Sobo-lewski’s objection, the trial court admitted the document.

When asked whether he knew he had a defense when he submitted the proof of compliance, Sobolewski claimed that, even though he “knew that [he] had a defense to whether or not the penis in th[e] picture was [his],” he “didn’t know that until [he] got the picture” the week before the trial. Id. at 332. The prosecutor then asked the trial court to take judicial notice of the fact that, on April 2, 2007, Sobolewski “was arraigned ... and [the charge against him] was read to him from the bench.” Id. at 332.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
889 N.E.2d 849, 2008 Ind. App. LEXIS 1405, 2008 WL 2654314, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/sobolewski-v-state-indctapp-2008.