Steven M. Sandleben v. State of Indiana

22 N.E.3d 782, 2014 Ind. App. LEXIS 606, 2014 WL 6992556
CourtIndiana Court of Appeals
DecidedDecember 11, 2014
Docket82A05-1403-CR-95
StatusPublished
Cited by31 cases

This text of 22 N.E.3d 782 (Steven M. Sandleben v. State of Indiana) 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
Steven M. Sandleben v. State of Indiana, 22 N.E.3d 782, 2014 Ind. App. LEXIS 606, 2014 WL 6992556 (Ind. Ct. App. 2014).

Opinion

*788 OPINION

NAJAM, Judge.

STATEMENT OF THE CASE

Steven Sandleben appeals his convictions for three counts of public voyeurism, 1 two as Class D felonies and one as a Class A misdemeanor, following a bench trial. He presents five issues for our review, which we revise and restate as follows:

1. Whether the evidence is sufficient to support his convictions.
2. Whether the voyeurism statute, as applied, is unconstitutionally vague.
3. Whether the trial court abused its discretion in admitting certain business records.
4. Whether the trial court abused its discretion when it sentenced him.
5. Whether his sentence is inappropriate in light of the nature of the offenses and his character.

We affirm.

FACTS AND PROCEDURAL HISTORY

On'August 12, 2013, as Stephanie Newton shopped in an Evansville store with her three children, she observed Sandle-ben squat down and place his hand up the skort 2 of her four-year-old daughter, E.N. When Newton screamed at Sandleben to get away from her daughter, Sandleben pulled his hand from under the skort, apologized, and quickly left the store. When he did, Newton observed that Sandleben held what looked like a cell phone in his hand, which he slipped into his pocket as he left. Newton followed him to the door of the store to get a description of his vehicle and called police.

Based on the information provided by Newton, police were able to locate Sandle-ben at his apartment on that same day. When officers arrived at Sandleben’s apartment, he answered the door, and the officers observed computer equipment inside the apartment. They detained Sand-leben, and Newton arrived for a show-up identification, at which time Newton positively identified Sandleben as the man from the store. Police then obtained a search warrant for Sandleben’s apartment and cell phone and, during its execution, seized a pocket camera, SD memory cards, a computer tower with five hard drives, and marijuana paraphernalia. Later, Detective Brad Evrard, of the Evansville Police Department, performed forensic computer analysis on the cell phone, one hard drive, 3 and an SD card. On the SD card, he found nineteen deleted files, including three videos of young girls playing in the Evansville store. In the third video, the camera is momentarily placed under E.N.’s skort.

In addition to the files recovered from the SD card, Detective Evrard also found over 200 digital videos on the hard drive.' Thirteen of the videos, titled “[H] and [L]” were found in a folder titled “siterock.” Tr. at 62. When Evrard Google-searched the term “siterock,” it returned a post from a user by that name on an Internet website called TheCandidForum.com. The profile picture associated with siterock’s account depicted Sandleben. On the website, siterock had authored 178 threads, one of which was titled “[H] and [L].” Id. *789 Evrard discovered that the videos on the computer and the videos from TheCandid-Forum were the same. They came from an underwater camera, which had been zoomed in and focused on the lower bodies, legs, and crotch areas of two young girls swimming in what Evrard recognized as a local pool. Evrard then cross-referenced the names [H] and [L] with local school records and successfully identified the two victims from the video, H.W. and L.N. Both were twelve years old.

The State charged Sandleben with three counts of public voyeurism; one count of possession of marijuana, as a Class A misdemeanor; and one count of possession of drug paraphernalia, as a Class A misdemeanor. One count of public voyeurism related to E.N. and was charged as a Class A misdemeanor. The other two counts related to H.W. and L.N. and were charged as Class D felonies for the electronic dissemination of the videos on the Internet. The State subsequently dismissed the charge for possession of marijuana.

The trial court held Sandleben’s bench trial on January 8, 2014. At trial, H.W. testified about her encounter with Sandle-ben in the local pool. She stated that Sandleben had approached her as she swam with L.N. and had asked their names and ages. 4 At some point, H.W. observed an object in Sandleben’s hand and asked whether it was an underwater camera. Sandleben confirmed that it was, but he stated that he was not using it. H.W. further testified that she did not give Sandleben permission to film.

In addition to the videos of E.N., the trial court admitted into evidence the underwater videos of H.W. and L.N. In these videos, the girls wear two-piece bathing suits while they swim and play in the pool. One of the girls wears a string bikini, while the other wears a bikini top with bathing-suit shorts. During the course of the videos, while the girls moved their legs back and forth, Sandleben captured the girls in positions where their legs were spread widely apart. These movements caused water to enter behind the swimsuit fabric and to separate the fabric from the girls’ bodies. In turn, Sandleben either zoomed in his camera or moved towards the girls to get a closer view of their crotches, which allowed him to video the bare skin exposed by visible gaps both at the buttocks and where the inner thighs meet the pubic arch of the pelvis. Also, at one point, the girl in the string bikini can be seen touching the string holding up one side of her bikini bottom, and Sandleben’s camera immediately zooms in to her crotch. And, on at least two other occasions, that same girl does a summersault in the water, and her bathing-suit bottom visibly separates from her buttocks.

Donald Baumholser, a Manager of Field Operations at Time Warner Cable (“TWC”), also testified regarding a record of subscriber information kept by TWC in the ordinary course of business. That record indicated that Sandleben was a TWC subscriber with the username “siterock@ twc.com.” The trial court admitted the records Baumholser authenticated over defense counsel’s objections.

At the conclusion of trial, the court found Sandleben guilty on all counts. It explained its judgment on the public voyeurism counts as follows:

The Court stands by its ruling that the bathing suit is not an undergarment[,] and that’s no[t] how the Court found [Sandleben] guilty because this Court does not feel that the, a bathing suit is an undergarment. The Court finds that *790 [Sandleben] did peep at the private area of the young ladies that he video taped. He recorded images of the nude pubic area of the girls and he did that through [h]is video taping of them under the water with a camera that they were not aware of[,] and the Court is going to cite some ... times of clips where I think it supports the Court’s finding-[Sand-leben] was able to use his camera to actually move in and follow with the movements of the young lady to get a better view of the pubic area that he was trying to film....

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Bluebook (online)
22 N.E.3d 782, 2014 Ind. App. LEXIS 606, 2014 WL 6992556, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/steven-m-sandleben-v-state-of-indiana-indctapp-2014.