Ware v. State

859 N.E.2d 708, 2007 Ind. App. LEXIS 4, 2007 WL 46069
CourtIndiana Court of Appeals
DecidedJanuary 9, 2007
Docket49A04-0602-CR-76
StatusPublished
Cited by34 cases

This text of 859 N.E.2d 708 (Ware 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
Ware v. State, 859 N.E.2d 708, 2007 Ind. App. LEXIS 4, 2007 WL 46069 (Ind. Ct. App. 2007).

Opinion

OPINION

ROBB, Judge.

Case Summary and Issues

Donald Ware appeals following a jury trial in which he was found guilty of mur *713 der, a felony, battery, a Class C felony, and two counts of criminal recklessness, Class D felonies. The trial court sentenced Ware to an aggregate sentence of seventy years. Ware now appeals his convictions and sentence, raising four issues, which we restate as:

1. Whether the trial court properly admitted evidence obtained through a search performed pursuant to a search warrant and statements made following a warrantless arrest;
2. Whether the trial court properly admitted evidence that the State did not disclose to Ware prior to trial;
3. Whether sufficient evidence exists to support Ware's convictions; and
4. Whether Ware's sentence is inappropriate in light of the nature of the offense and his character.

We conclude that the trial court properly admitted the evidence obtained pursuant to the search and arrest, and the evi-denee that the State did not disclose prior to trial. We further conclude that sufficient evidence exists to support Ware's convictions. Finally, we conclude that Ware's sentence is not inappropriate in light of his character and the nature of the offense. We affirm. 1

Facts and Procedural History

On July 24, 2005, a group of teenage boys gathered in an area near the intersection of Rockville Road and Girls School Road in Marion County for the purpose of throwing eggs at passing cars. At one point, the boys struck Lisa Baker's car. Baker stopped and began yelling that she was going to call the police. The boys then struck a pickup truck, which was later determined to be driven by Ware. Ware stopped, exited his truck, and yelled at the boys. He then returned to his truck and drove to where Baker had stopped her car. While talking to Baker, Ware made racially derogatory comments about the boys and told Baker that he had a rifle and was going to get the boys. 2 Ware asked Baker where the boys were, and after Baker pointed in the general direction, Ware drove after the boys. While the boys were running from Ware's truck, two shots were fired, killing Brandon Dunson and wounding Michael Dyer.

Tracy Nash was the first police officer to arrive on the scene. Officer Nash was unaware that there had been a shooting, and was on the seene to investigate reports of boys throwing eggs at passing vehicles. He noticed Ware's truck because it was traveling at a high rate of speed and saw it pull into a public storage facility's parking lot. When Officer Nash pulled in behind the truck, Ware exited his truck and approached the driver's side of Officer Nash's vehicle. Ware told Officer Nash that he had been struck in the head by an egg, and told Officer Nash that the boys who had thrown the eggs were running behind the public storage facility. Officer Nash told Ware not to leave, and went to look for the boys. When Officer Nash returned to the parking lot after an unsue-cessful search for the boys, Ware had left the scene.

Dunson's friends who were running with him were afraid of being caught and did not stop when Dunson was shot. Later that night, one of Dunson's friends who had not participated in the egging became concerned about Dunson and went to look *714 for him. He found Dunson's body in the grass near the public storage facility and called the police. After learning that a shooting had occurred, the police turned their attention to identifying the man with whom Baker and Officer Nash spoke. Baker was shown a photographic array and initially identified, with ninety percent confidence, Chester Williams as the man with whom she spoke. After being shown a second photographic array, Baker identified Williams with one hundred percent confidence. However, further investigation ruled out Williams as a suspect. A few days later, the police received an anonymous phone call indicating that a man named "Donny" was responsible for shooting Dunson, and that he lived in Avon, Indiana, and drove a red pickup truck. Police then began surveillance of Ware's house and determined that Ware was "Donny." Officers then showed a photographic array to Officer Nash, who identified Ware as the man with whom he spoke the night of the shooting. The police then applied for a warrant to search Ware's house and vehicle. The facts set out in the probable cause affidavit accompanying the warrant application are:

(1) The boys identified the shooter as a white male who was driving a red pickup truck;
(2) Baker spoke with a white male operating a red pickup truck and talking on a cellular phone who told her that he had a gun and was going to pursue the boys;
(8) Officer Nash spoke with a white male operating a red Ford F 150 pickup truck who pointed him in the direction of the boys and left the scene before Officer Nash returned;
(4) Officer Scheid received an anonymous call indicating that the white male who shot Dunson is named "Donny," lives in Avon, Indiana, and drives a red pickup truck with a toolbox in the bed. The caller stated that Donny told her on the night of the shooting that he had shot at someone who had egged him. The caller further stated that Donny sells drugs and had remained in his home since the day of the shooting. The caller finally provided Donny's cell phone number;
Officer Boomershine undertook surveillance of the home identified by the anonymous caller and observed a red Ford F 150 pickup with a toolbox in the bed and a white male who appeared to be approximately 510" and 200 pounds;
(6) The license plate on the pickup truck indicated that the truck was registered to Terri Eberwein;
(7) Ware's arrest record indicated that when he had been arrested for possession of cocaine, operating while intoxicated, and resisting arrest, he had been driving a red pickup truck with the same VIN as the truck registered to Eberwein;
The cell phone records for the number supplied by the anonymous caller indicated that Eberwein was the subscriber;
(9) Officers learned from a "Justis Bail Interview" that Ware had previously lived with Eberwein;
(10) Officer Nash picked Ware's photograph out of an array, identifying him as the man with whom he spoke at the seene of the shooting.

After receiving the search warrant, officers found eggshells and residue in and on Ware's truck, and found roughly forty-nine grams of marijuana in Ware's residence. No gun was recovered during this search or throughout the remainder of the investigation. Officers took Eberwein, who was at the residence at the time of the search, *715 to the police station for questioning.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
859 N.E.2d 708, 2007 Ind. App. LEXIS 4, 2007 WL 46069, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/ware-v-state-indctapp-2007.