Harold E. Chastain v. State of Indiana

FILED
Aug 04 2016, 8:25 am
CLERK
Indiana Supreme Court
Court of Appeals
and Tax Court
ATTORNEY FOR APPELLANT ATTORNEYS FOR APPELLEE
Cara Schaefer Wieneke Gregory F. Zoeller
Wieneke Law Office, LLC Attorney General of Indiana
Brooklyn, Indiana
Eric P. Babbs
Deputy Attorney General
Indianapolis, Indiana
IN THE
COURT OF APPEALS OF INDIANA
Harold E. Chastain, August 4, 2016
Appellant-Defendant, Court of Appeals Cause No.
20A03-1510-CR-1839
v. Appeal from the Elkhart Superior
Court
State of Indiana, The Honorable Stephen R.
Appellee-Plaintiff. Bowers, Judge
Trial Court Cause No.
20D02-1303-FC-75
Barnes, Judge.
Case Summary
[1] Harold Chastain appeals his conviction for Class C felony intimidation. We
affirm.
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Issue
[2] The sole issue before us is whether there is sufficient evidence to sustain
Chastain’s conviction for Class C felony intimidation.
Facts
[3] The evidence most favorable to the conviction is that, on the evening of March
8, 2013, Justin Beegle was waiting for a table with his family at the Between the
Buns restaurant in Elkhart. Beegle heard Chastain loudly arguing with a
woman, Tracy Wilmore, in the parking lot, and, after he saw Chastain shove
her, Beegle decided to intervene. He began walking toward Chastain and
Wilmore. Chastain noticed Beegle walking toward him and said, “do you have
a f***ing problem?” Tr. p. 237. Beegle stopped walking when he was about ten
to fifteen feet from Chastain and had some argumentative words with
Chastain.1 Chastain started walking toward Beegle, who told Chastain, “you
don’t want to do that . . . .” Id. at 238. Chastain then turned around, went to
his truck, retrieved a handgun, cocked and pointed it at Beegle, and then said
“I’ll f***ing kill you” several times. Id. Beegle responded by telling Chastain
he was a “f***ing p***y.” Id. at 265. The encounter ended shortly thereafter
when Chastain got in his truck and drove away.
1
The evidence is unclear as to what exactly Beegle said to Chastain, but it seems uncontested that the words
exchanged were argumentative in nature. Although testified to by a defense witness, the State does not
dispute that Beegle said to Chastain as he was walking toward Chastain, “I’ll beat your a** if you don’t leave
her alone.” Tr. p. 318.
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[4] The State charged Chastain with Class C felony intimidation, Class D felony
pointing a firearm, and Class B misdemeanor battery.2 The charging
information did not specify what prior act Beegle allegedly had engaged in for
which Chastain intended to place Beegle in fear of retaliation. At Chastain’s
jury trial, however, the prosecutor argued that the prior lawful act was Beegle’s
interruption of the fight between Chastain and Wilmore. After trial, Chastain
was found guilty of all three charges. The trial court entered judgments of
conviction for all three counts but later merged the pointing a firearm
conviction into the intimidation conviction at sentencing. Chastain now
appeals.
Analysis
[5] Chastain contends there is insufficient evidence to sustain his conviction for
Class C felony intimidation. In conducting such a review, we must consider
only the probative evidence and reasonable inferences therefrom supporting the
verdict. Drane v. State, 867 N.E.2d 144, 146 (Ind. 2007). “It is the fact-finder’s
role, not that of appellate courts, to assess witness credibility and weigh the
evidence to determine whether it is sufficient to support a conviction.” Id. We
will affirm unless no reasonable fact-finder could have found the elements of the
crime proven beyond a reasonable doubt. Id. The evidence need not overcome
every reasonable hypothesis of innocence. Id.
2
The battery charge was related to Chastain’s shoving of Wilmore.
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[6] In order to convict Chastain of intimidation as charged, the State was required
to prove that he communicated a threat to another person, with the intent that
the other person be placed in fear of retaliation for a prior lawful act. See Ind.
Code § 35-45-2-1(a)(2) (2013).3 The offense was a Class C felony if the
defendant drew or used a deadly weapon while communicating that threat.
I.C. § 35-45-2-1(b)(2) (2013).4 Here, the sole point of contention is whether the
State adequately proved that Chastain intended to place Beegle in fear of
retaliation for a prior lawful act when he pointed a firearm at and threatened to
kill Beegle. We have held that, under the intimidation statute:
“[M]ere proof that the victim is engaged in an act which is not
illegal at the time the threat is made is not sufficient. Rather, the
State must establish that the legal act occurred prior to the threat
and that the defendant intended to place the victim in fear of
retaliation for that act.”
Blackmon v. State, 32 N.E.3d 1178, 1182 (Ind. Ct. App. 2015) (quoting Casey v.
State, 676 N.E.2d 1069, 1072 (Ind. Ct. App. 1997)).
[7] As a general rule, penal statutes must be strictly construed against the State and
any ambiguities they contain should be resolved in favor of the accused. Shuai
v. State, 966 N.E.2d 619, 628 (Ind. Ct. App. 2012), trans. denied. Criminal
3
The State specifically charged Chastain under this subsection and not the portion of the intimidation statute
prohibiting a person from forcing another person to engage in conduct against the other person’s will. I.C. §
35-45-2-1(a)(1) (2013).
4
The offense of intimidation with a deadly weapon is now classified as a Level 5 felony.
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statutes also should not “‘be enlarged by construction, implication, or
intendment beyond the fair meaning of the language used.’” Id. (quoting Herron
v. State, 729 N.E.2d 1008, 1010 (Ind. Ct. App. 2000), trans. denied). “However,
penal statutes are not to be read so narrowly as to exclude instances the statute
fairly covers or in a manner that disregards legislative purposes and intent.” Id.
[8] Chastain urges that we should reverse his intimidation conviction in light of our
reversal of intimidation convictions in Blackmon, Casey, and Ransley v. State, 850
N.E.2d 443 (Ind. Ct. App. 2006), trans. denied. In Casey, the defendant got into
a fight with one of the alleged victim’s friends while they were at a bar. Later,
the victim returned home. The defendant went to the victim’s home with
several friends. The victim went outside with two other persons and pleaded
with the defendant to leave. Instead, the defendant told the victim to go inside.
The defendant then struck one of the victim’s friends in the head with a baseball
bat, and said to the victim, “You’re next b****” and that he was going to kill
her. We held there was insufficient evidence as to a prior lawful act for which
the defendant was intending to retaliate against the victim. Casey, 676 N.E.2d
at 1073. We rejected the State’s attempts to claim that the defendant was
retaliating against the victim for her acts of being a patron at the bar, for being
at her house, or for witnessing the baseball bat attack on her friend. Id.
[9] In Ransley, the defendant and alleged victim had an ongoing property-line
dispute. On the day in question, the defendant called 911 following the victim
having thrown items onto the defendant’s property and yelling at the defendant,
causing the defendant to feel threatened. Later, while mowing the grass, the
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victim saw the defendant outside, stopped the mower, and began yelling again
at the defendant. The defendant approached the victim, and the victim noticed
that the defendant had a gun. The victim returned to his garage to grab an axe
handle and walked back to the defendant, who then brandished his handgun.
The victim did not remember the defendant saying anything at that time.
Police then arrived and arrested the defendant, who was charged with and
convicted of intimidation. We reversed, finding insufficient evidence that the
defendant intended to communicate a threat to the victim for the purported
prior lawful act of arguing over the property line. Ransley, 850 N.E.2d at 447-
48. We acknowledged “that a person may be angry enough to commit
intimidation. However, anger, without proof of intent to retaliate, is not
enough to satisfy the requirements of the statute.” Id. at 447.
[10] In Blackmon, the alleged victim believed that a neighbor or the neighbor’s friend,
the defendant, was stealing water from his daughter’s home. The defendant
went to the neighbor’s house to confront someone about it. The victim began
yelling at the neighbor and the defendant on the neighbor’s driveway,
demanding to know who had given them permission to use the water. The
neighbor offered to pay for the water. The victim declined this offer and said he
was going to call the police. At this point, the defendant pulled out a knife and
held it above his head. The victim responded by implying that he would shoot
the defendant. The defendant put the knife down, cursed at the victim, and
walked away. The State specifically alleged in the charging information that
the defendant had committed intimidation by putting the victim in fear of
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retaliation for having caught the defendant stealing water. We reversed the
defendant’s conviction. First, we noted there was insufficient evidence that the
victim had actually caught the defendant stealing any water, as alleged in the
charging information. Blackmon, 32 N.E.3d at 1182. Additionally, there was
no evidence that the victim believed the defendant intended to retaliate against
him for any prior act; the defendant did not draw his knife until after the victim
said he was going to call the police, but the State did not charge the defendant
under the part of the intimidation statute prohibiting a defendant from forcing a
victim to act against his or her will. Id. at 1183.
[11] Two other, recent cases from this court not discussed by the parties warrant
mentioning. The first is Causey v. State, 45 N.E.3d 1239 (Ind. Ct. App. 2015).
In that case, police officers responded to a report of a disturbance at the
defendant’s residence. After officers arrived and attempted to speak with the
defendant, he told the officers to get off his property and said, “if you come any
closer I’ll shoot.” Causey, 45 N.E.2d at 1240. A panel of this court reversed the
defendant’s intimidation conviction. It held that the defendant’s threat was
“conditional” and intended to dissuade the officers from engaging in future
conduct, i.e. coming any closer to the defendant, and was not a threat related to
any past conduct of the officers. Causey, 45 N.E.3d at 1241 (citing C.L. v. State,
2 N.E.3d 798, 801 (Ind. Ct. App. 2014)).5 The Causey panel also held that the
5
C.L. was a juvenile delinquency case where the defendant threatened to beat up his grandfather if the
grandfather did not give him money for a new car, out of loan proceeds the grandfather expected to receive;
the majority reversed the delinquency adjudication for intimidation. C.L., 2 N.E.3d at 801.
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defendant’s ranting before explicitly threatening to shoot the officers was
insufficient to establish that he was threatening them for the act of having
responded to the 911 call. Id. at 1242. It appears the Causey panel may have
believed the officers were currently responding to a call when the defendant
threatened them, not that they already had responded, and for this additional
reason held there was insufficient evidence to support an intimidation
conviction because there was no past act, only present engagement by the
officers in a lawful act at the time of the threat. See Causey, 45 N.E.3d at 1242.
[12] In Roar v. State, 52 N.E.3d 940 (Ind. Ct. App. 2016), a different panel of this
court disagreed with the holding and reasoning in Causey. In Roar, the
defendant observed the victim serve an eviction notice on the defendant’s sister.
The defendant then immediately began yelling at the victim, calling her names
and accusing her of being unprofessional; at the end of his tirade, he called the
victim a “b****” and threatened to kill her “if [she] came back on the property.”
Roar, slip op. at 3. The Roar majority disagreed with Causey and C.L. The
majority opinion observed:
Mere use of conditional language in the course of
communicating a threat does not vitiate the statute’s application
when the factual predicate for the threat was a prior lawful act of
the victim. Stated another way, the language a defendant uses in
communicating a threat may be relevant to the fact-finder’s
assessment of the defendant’s intent, but the language used is not
the only relevant consideration.
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Id., slip op. at 6. The majority held there was sufficient evidence to support the
defendant’s intimidation conviction, given the “clear nexus between the prior
lawful act and the threat.” Id. at 7. Recently, our supreme court granted
transfer in Roar but adopted the majority opinion’s analysis regarding
sufficiency of the evidence. Roar v. State, No. 49S02-1607-CR-372 (Ind. July 12,
2016). We presume that by doing so, our supreme court also disapproved of
the analysis and holdings of Causey and C.L.
[13] We conclude that this case is unlike Casey, Ransley, and Blackmon. And, to the
extent this case is highly similar to both Causey and Roar, our supreme court has
now made it clear that Roar is correct and Causey is not. Here, Beegle
committed a distinct lawful act by interrupting Chastain’s argument and fight
with Wilmore. Chastain then directed his anger toward Beegle. It is clear from
the evidence that Chastain reacted in response to Beegle’s interruption. Beegle
was not merely an “innocent bystander” as was the alleged victim in Casey;
rather, he had taken positive but legal action in attempting to end the
confrontation between Chastain and Wilmore. Unlike in Ransley, Beegle and
Chastain were not involved in an ongoing dispute, with each side badgering the
other and engaging in back-and-forth aggressive conduct. And, the result in
Blackmon turned largely upon the particular wording of the charging
information and the prior lawful act it alleged for which the defendant was
seeking retaliation. Here, the charging information was silent on the particulars
of the prior lawful act, and there is no argument that the information had to
include such detail.
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[14] We acknowledge that Chastain did not explicitly tell Beegle why he pointed a
gun at Beegle and repeatedly said that he was going to kill Beegle. Still, we
conclude it was reasonable to infer from the evidence that Chastain’s actions
were prompted by the initial lawful act of Beegle interrupting his argument with
Wilmore, and Chastain’s threat was communicated with the intent to place
Beegle in fear for that act. There is nothing in the intimidation statute that
requires a defendant to expressly state what the victim’s prior lawful act was for
which a defendant intends to retaliate. It is well-settled that in criminal cases,
the State “is not required to prove intent by direct and positive evidence.”
Johnson v. State, 837 N.E.2d 209, 214 (Ind. Ct. App. 2005), trans. denied. A
defendant’s intent may be proven by circumstantial evidence alone, and
knowledge and intent may be inferred from the facts and circumstances of each
case. Id. (quoting Lykins v. State, 726 N.E.2d 1265, 1270 (Ind. Ct. App. 2000)).
Roar applied this principle of law in deciding that all the facts and
circumstances of the case allowed an inference that the defendant intended to
threaten the victim with retaliation for a prior law act, despite the “conditional”
language used by the defendant.
[15] Furthermore, as a matter of public policy, we believe that persons in a position
like that in which Beegle found himself should be able to attempt to defuse
situations like the one between Chastain and Wilmore without being threatened
with the use of deadly force for doing so. We believe the legislature intended to
criminalize such conduct when it enacted the intimidation statute. To the
extent Chastain contends that Beegle was engaged in a continuing act of
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interfering with Chastain’s argument when the threat was issued, the reasonable
inference most favorable to the jury’s verdict is that Chastain intended to
threaten Beegle for his prior, completed lawful act of having already interrupted
Chastain’s argument. There is no requirement in the intimidation statute that
the prior lawful act has to be completed for any considerable length of time
before a threat is made.
[16] We conclude that, as held by this court in Roar and as adopted by our supreme
court, a conviction under the intimidation statute should not depend upon a
precise parsing of the threatening language used by a defendant or a detailed
timeline of when a threat was issued in relation to a prior lawful act. Here, it is
clear that Beegle engaged in a prior lawful act, and there was a clear nexus
between that act and Chastain’s threat to kill Beegle while pointing a gun at
him. Thus, there is sufficient evidence to support the jury’s finding that
Chastain committed the crime of intimidation while drawing or using a deadly
weapon.
Conclusion
[17] There is sufficient evidence to sustain Chastain’s conviction for Class C felony
intimidation. We affirm.
[18] Affirmed.
Vaidik, C.J., and Mathias, J., concur.
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