Medea Woods v. State of Indiana ( 2012 )

FILED
FOR PUBLICATION
Dec 27 2012, 8:53 am
CLERK
of the supreme court,
court of appeals and
tax court
ATTORNEYS FOR APPELLANT: ATTORNEYS FOR APPELLEE:
JACKIE M. BENNETT, JR. GREGORY F. ZOELLER
MICHELE L. RICHEY Attorney General of Indiana
Taft Stettinius & Hollister, LLP
Indianapolis, Indiana JODI KATHRYN STEIN
Deputy Attorney General
Indianapolis, Indiana
IN THE
COURT OF APPEALS OF INDIANA
MEDEA WOODS, )
)
Appellant-Defendant, )
)
vs. ) No. 39A05-1204-CR-189
)
STATE OF INDIANA, )
)
Appellee-Plaintiff. )
INTERLOCUTORY APPEAL FROM THE JEFFERSON CIRCUIT COURT
The Honorable Ted R. Todd, Judge
Cause No. 39C01-1102-FC-110
December 27, 2012
OPINION - FOR PUBLICATION
VAIDIK, Judge
Case Summary
Medea Woods appeals the trial court’s denial of her partial motion to dismiss. She
contends that some of the charged crimes for health-care billing fraud fall outside of the
statute of limitations, the State fails to provide sufficient facts in the charging information
to allege the concealment exception, and the crimes do not constitute a continuing wrong.
Because this is an interlocutory appeal from a motion to dismiss, the State must only
allege sufficient facts in the charging information that the charged crimes were
committed within the statute of limitations. However, we disagree with Reeves v. State,
938 N.E.2d 10, 15-16 (Ind. Ct. App. 2010), reh’g denied, trans. denied, and hold that the
probable-cause affidavit can be considered in addition to the charging information to
determine whether the State has alleged sufficient facts to place the charged crimes
within the statute of limitations. We find that the State has alleged sufficient facts when
the charging information and probable-cause affidavit are considered together and
therefore affirm.
Facts and Procedural History
Woods is a licensed clinical psychologist who was a Medicaid provider in Indiana
between 2002 and 2007. The Medicaid provider agreement required Woods to maintain
records to support the claims she filed and to make those records available for review and
audit. Appellant’s App. p. 14-15. It also required Woods to return any erroneous
payment she received within fifteen days. State’s Ex. 1. In order to bill Medicaid for
payment, Woods had to follow the State’s procedures for submitting claims, including
using Recipient Identification Numbers and procedure codes to bill for services rendered.
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Appellant’s App. p. 15. Submitted claims were presumed valid unless it was shown
otherwise. Tr. p. 57-58.
In March 2006, the government’s Medicaid billing auditor, Health Care Excel,
began investigating Woods’s submissions due to “an unusually high level of billing
compared to other mental health care providers in her area.” Appellant’s App. p. 15. An
onsite audit of Woods’s files was conducted in May 2006, and Woods was unable to
produce fifteen of the forty-one files requested for review. Health Care Excel found
several billing concerns and violations, and as a result, Woods was put on pre-payment
review, meaning that Woods’s claims were subject to heightened scrutiny before
payment. Id. at 16.
In August 2006, the audit information was given to the Indiana Medicaid Fraud
Control Unit, and the case was assigned to Investigator Diane Hedges. Hedges
conducted her own investigation by reviewing Woods’s billing submissions and
interviewing patients and/or their parent or guardian as well as Woods herself. After her
investigation, Hedges concluded that Woods had fraudulently billed Medicaid by
submitting illegitimate claims along with legitimate claims using her patients’ Recipient
Identification Numbers from 2002 to 2007.
On March 17, 2007, Woods voluntarily terminated her Medicaid provider
agreement with the State. Later in 2007, she moved to Wyoming. Meanwhile, Hedges’s
investigation continued, and in December 2007, she contacted the Office of the Inspector
General, which joined her in the on-going investigation. On August 1, 2008, Hedges
presented her case to the United States Attorney’s Office for review of possible criminal
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charges. In March 2009, Hedges found Woods in Rawlins, Wyoming, and she and
Special Agent Shelia Green interviewed Woods, who said that she had been under
financial pressure and had a “readiness to make a mistake” in her favor when she
submitted her Medicaid claims. Tr. p. 23. Hedges completed her investigation in May
2008, and the calculated value of loss was determined to be in excess of $350,000.
On November 9, 2009, a federal grand jury indicted Woods with health-care fraud
for the fraudulent Medicaid claims she submitted between 2002 and 2007. The federal
charges were dismissed on July 12, 2010. The State filed its own charges against Woods
on February 9, 2011, for several counts of health-care billing fraud for the same activity
between 2002 and 2007. Woods moved for a partial dismissal of the charges on the basis
that any charged activities before February 9, 2006, were barred by the five-year statute
of limitations. Following a hearing, the trial court denied the motion. Woods asked the
trial court to certify its order on the partial motion to dismiss for interlocutory appeal,
which the trial court granted. This Court accepted jurisdiction over the interlocutory
appeal on May 18, 2012.
Discussion and Decision
Woods contends that the trial court erred by denying her partial motion to dismiss
the charges against her because: (1) the information and probable-cause affidavit failed to
provide sufficient information to allow the application of the concealment exception; (2)
the charges based on activities before February 9, 2006, are time-barred under the five-
year statute of limitations; and (3) the offenses charged constitute discrete, individual
claims instead of a continuing wrong. Because this is an interlocutory appeal of a motion
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to dismiss, however, we review only the first issue. The State must only make sufficient
allegations in the charging information that the alleged crimes fall within the statute of
limitations; whether the State has actually met its burden of proving that the alleged
crimes fall within the statute of limitations is a question for trial. Reeves v. State, 938
N.E.2d 10, 15-16 (Ind. Ct. App. 2010), reh’g denied, trans. denied.
When reviewing a trial court’s ruling on a motion to dismiss, we use an abuse of
discretion standard.1 Id. at 14. We will only reverse if the trial court’s decision is clearly
against the logic and effect of the facts and circumstances. Id. Indiana Code section 35-
41-4-2(h)(2) allows tolling of the statute of limitations to serve “the State’s interest of
ensuring that it can later prosecute a criminal suspect even if, for a time, he conceals
evidence of the offense such that authorities are unaware and unable to determine that a
crime has been committed.” Id. at 17 (quoting Kifer v. State, 740 N.E.2d 586, 588 (Ind.
Ct. App. 2000) (quotation omitted)). As this Court explicitly held in Reeves, the State
must “plead the circumstances of the concealment exception in the charging
information,” id. at 17 (emphasis added), and that pleading must contain sufficient facts
so that the “defendant is apprised of the facts upon which the State intends to rely on and
may be prepared to meet that proof at trial.”2 Willner v. State, 602 N.E.2d 507, 509 (Ind.
1
Woods argues that we should use a de novo standard of review because this is a case of
statutory interpretation. Appellant’s Br. p. 5. However, we review a motion to dismiss a criminal charge
under the statute of limitations for an abuse of discretion. State v. Lindsay, 862 N.E.2d 314, 317 (Ind. Ct.
App. 2007), trans. denied. Further, Woods does not make a statutory interpretation argument; rather, she
argues that the facts do not support the concealment exception. But, even if we were to use the de novo
standard of review, the outcome would be the same.
2
We recognize that our Supreme Court has noted that the “evidence of the offense” language of
the concealment exception articulated at Indiana Code section 35-41-4-2(h)(2) may apply to
“concealment of any evidence, including evidence of guilt, and thus would toll the statute of limitations in
any crime in which a defendant tries to avoid apprehension.” Sloan v. State, 947 N.E.2d 917, 922 n.8
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1992). Additionally, the charging information must also state “the date of the offense
with sufficient particularity to show that the offense was committed within the period of
limitations applicable to that offense.” Ind. Code § 35-34-1-2(a)(5).
Our Supreme Court examined a related charging information requirement in a
similar context when determining whether the charging information sufficiently stated the
alleged offense in Patterson v. State, 495 N.E.2d 714, 719 (Ind. 1986). Indiana Code
section 35-34-1-2(a)(4) states that the charging information must “set[] forth the nature
and elements of the offense charged in plain and concise language without unnecessary
repetition.” In Patterson, the charging information alleging murder did not set forth the
manner of death, rendering it insufficient under Subsection (a)(4). Our Supreme Court
held, however, that while the charging information did not contain sufficient factual
detail of the alleged offense, the probable-cause affidavit that supported the charging
information did contain the necessary details to apprise Patterson of the charges against
her. Since Patterson was made aware of the charges against her by virtue of the two
documents viewed together, her substantial rights were not prejudiced by the deficiency
in the charging information. Patterson, 495 N.E.2d at 719.
Indiana Code section 35-34-1-2 as a whole sets forth the required contents of the
charging information, the overarching purpose of which is to give the defendant
particular notice of the crimes with which she is charged during the applicable statute of
limitations period so that she can prepare an appropriate defense. See Bei Bei Shuai v.
(Ind. 2011). However, we agree with the holding in Kifer, 740 N.E.2d at 588-89, that interpreting
“evidence of the offense” to include any evidence, including evidence of guilt, would allow the exception
to swallow the rule, tolling the statute of limitations in “nearly all crimes in which a defendant attempts to
avoid apprehension.” Id. at 589.
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State, 966 N.E.2d 619, 626 (Ind. Ct. App. 2012), trans. denied; Reeves, 938 N.E.2d at 16.
If the probable-cause affidavit can be used to supplement the charging information in
Patterson where the offense was not alleged with sufficient detail – charging information
is insufficient under Indiana Code section 35-34-1-2(a)(4) – we see no reason why the
same cannot be true in a case where the concealment exception has not been alleged with
sufficient detail to place the charged crimes within the applicable statute of limitations –
charging information is insufficient under Indiana Code section 35-34-1-2(a)(5). As long
as the defendant is given enough information and notice to prepare an appropriate
defense and does not have any of her substantial rights prejudiced, we see no reason why
the probable-cause affidavit should not be considered in the analysis.
Since the charging information and probable-cause affidavit are filed together,
they should be viewed in tandem to determine if they satisfy the goal of putting the
defendant on notice of the crimes with which she is charged during the applicable statute
of limitations period so that she can prepare an appropriate defense. We therefore
disagree with the holding in Reeves that we must look only to the charging information in
this case, as that would hinder the true intent behind charging informations, Indiana Code
section 35-34-1-2, and Patterson.
Here, the charging information and probable-cause affidavit taken together
provided both sufficient facts to allege concealment and apprise Woods that the State was
going to argue that theory at trial. The charging information alleges that Woods “did
knowingly or intentionally conceal information, to wit: that not all services claimed for
her Medicaid patients were actually rendered,” and “did knowingly or intentionally use
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the identifying information, to wit: the Medicaid Recipient Identification Number
(“RID”) of many of her Medicaid patients, without their consent, with the intent to harm
or defraud another person.” Appellant’s App. p. 12. Additionally, the probable-cause
affidavit gave further detail as to how Woods filed fraudulent claims; specifically, that
Woods filed illegitimate claims along with legitimate claims for many patients using their
unique RID numbers. Id. at 15, 17-18. In particular, the State’s claim is that Woods
concealed her crime by hiding illegitimate Medicaid claims within a sea of legitimate
claims, using patients’ RID numbers on the illegitimate claims to make it appear that
those claims were also legitimate.
Further, the probable-cause affidavit indicated that the evidence that Woods was
submitting fraudulent claims was not known until March 2006 when Health Care Excel
conducted an audit of her practice due to unusually high billing levels. Id. at 15. Since
February 9, 2011, when the charges were filed, is within five years of March 2006, these
facts are sufficient to allege concealment and that the crimes charged were committed
within the applicable statute of limitations.
We find that when viewing the charging information and probable-cause affidavit
together, the State has sufficiently alleged concealment to put Woods on notice that the
State will argue that theory at trial. Proving concealment and therefore that the crimes
charged fell within the applicable statute of limitations are questions that the State has the
burden of proving at trial, not at this point of the proceedings. We therefore affirm the
trial court’s denial of Woods’s partial motion to dismiss.
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Affirmed.
MATHIAS, J., and BARNES, J., concur
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