Tawney v. State

439 N.E.2d 582, 1982 Ind. LEXIS 943
CourtIndiana Supreme Court
DecidedSeptember 2, 1982
Docket680S176
StatusPublished
Cited by63 cases

This text of 439 N.E.2d 582 (Tawney v. State) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Indiana Supreme Court primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Tawney v. State, 439 N.E.2d 582, 1982 Ind. LEXIS 943 (Ind. 1982).

Opinion

PRENTICE, Justice.

Defendant (Appellant) was convicted of Robbery, Ind. Code § 35-42-5-1 (Burns 1979) and Battery, Ind. Code § 35-42-2-1 (Burns 1979) and was sentenced to a total of thirty (30) years imprisonment. This direct appeal seeks review upon the following issues:

(1) Whether the trial court erred in denying Defendant’s motion to dismiss the jury venire prior to trial.

(2) Whether the trial court erred in admitting Defendant’s statement to the police into evidence.

(3) Whether the evidence was sufficient to sustain the verdicts.

(4) Whether the trial court erred in not giving the Defendant’s tendered instructions.

(5) Whether the trial court erred in sentencing the Defendant for both Robbery and for Battery.

On October 7, 1979, the defendant was walking with Jeffery Beal, age 12, when they saw William Butt, a mutual acquaintance. The defendant said to Beal that he knew “where we can get some money.” The two youths then asked Butt for a ride in his automobile and Butt assented.

Shortly thereafter, the trio drove to Michigan, obtained a “six-pack” of beer and began drinking the contents. There is a dispute as to whether or not the three males returned to Michigan after the beer had been consumed, purchased a “twelve-pack” of beer, and proceeded to drink the contents. After riding around for awhile, Butt stopped the automobile at a rest stop. When Butt returned to the automobile, he let the defendant drive the car while he sat in the passenger seat and Beal sat in the rear seat. Beal testified that a verbal fight broke out between himself and Butt and that when the Defendant took his hands off the steering wheel to intercede, the car veered into a ditch.

Butt attempted to push the car out of the ditch, at which time the defendant seized him from behind and stabbed him repeatedly with a knife. The defendant then turned Butt over, removed his wallet, and tried to hide the body among nearby bushes. The two youths then fled but were stopped about one hour later by the police on the same highway and arrested for public intoxication. In the interim, Butt reached a nearby farmhouse, where he received medical attention.

ISSUE I

Defendant contends that he was denied a fair trial when his motion to dismiss the jury venire was denied following a hearing. At the hearing, Defendant argued that the jury venire selection from property tax rolls resulted in the systematic exclusion of eighteen to twenty-four year olds from the ve-nire and constituted a denial of equal protection.

The standard to which jury selection must conform is aptly stated in Duren v. Missouri, (1979) 439 U.S. 357, 364, 99 S.Ct. 664, 668, 58 L.Ed.2d 579, 586-87:

“In order to establish a prima facie violation of the fair cross-section requirement, the Defendant must show (1) that the group alleged to be excluded is a ‘distinctive’ group in the community; (2) that the representation of this group in ve-nires from which juries are selected is fair and reasonable in relation to the number of such persons in the community; and (3) that this under-representation is due to the systematic exclusion of the group in the jury selection process.”

Defendant presented statistics evidencing the actual number and percentage of eighteen to twenty-four year old persons in Porter County and the number of jurors *585 in that age group over a period of five years. He demonstrated that this group generally are not home owners who would appear on property tax rolls. Although these statistics do demonstrate a discrepancy between the cross-sectional makeup of venires and the population eligible for jury service, there is no requirement for the makeup of a jury to mirror the makeup of the community and actually to reflect the various distinctive groups in the population. Taylor v. Louisiana, (1975) 419 U.S. 522, 95 S.Ct. 692, 42 L.Ed.2d 690, Daniels v. State, (1980) Ind., 408 N.E.2d 1244, 1247. As in our recent decision in Grassmyer v. State, (1981) Ind., 429 N.E.2d 248, 251, which involved a similar challenge to the jury selection process of Porter County, there is “no showing that eighteen to twenty-four year olds are a group distinct from the rest of society in a significant way, having interests which cannot be adequately represented by other members of the jury panel.”

The Defendant also argues that defendants with privately employed counsel were able to secure a special venire compiled from a list other than the property tax rolls, while indigent defendants were confined to panels drawn only from the property tax rolls. However, defendant has failed to support this contention. In one instance to which he makes reference, the record demonstrates the request for a special venire was never ruled upon; and in another instance cited, the record reveals that the motion for the special venire was denied. Defendant’s contention is without support.

The defendant next argues that this Court held in State ex rel Brune v. Vanderburgh Circuit Court, (1971) 255 Ind. 505, 265 N.E.2d 524, that property tax rolls may not be used in jury selection, if a representative cross-section did not result. In State ex rel Brune, we were called upon to review the use of voter registration lists for selecting veniremen as ordered by the Circuit Court and occasioned by the Legislature’s repeal of the general personal property tax. While we noted approval of such jury selection as meeting the constitutional purpose of providing litigants with a fair and impartial jury, we cast no judgment of the practice, elsewhere, of selecting veniremen solely from real property tax rolls.

The defendant next challenges the venire selection process by arguing that Ind.Code § 33-4-5-2 (Burns 1979) requires that the selections be proportional to each jury commissioner’s district. The Porter County jury commissioners used district voter registration figures to establish jury selections, and did not use federal census figures. While census figures may offer a more complete data base, in developing selection lists by voter districts, the commissioners’ method substantially complied with the requirements of the statute and was likely to result in a properly proportioned selection. Defendant cites State ex rel Burns v. Sharp, (1979) Ind., 393 N.E.2d 127, in support of its contention that the ratio of prospective jurors from each district should have been determined by reference to the most recent United States census figures. Sharp

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Bluebook (online)
439 N.E.2d 582, 1982 Ind. LEXIS 943, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/tawney-v-state-ind-1982.