Christa Spinks v. State of Indiana (mem. dec.)

MEMORANDUM DECISION
Pursuant to Ind. Appellate Rule 65(D), FILED
this Memorandum Decision shall not be Dec 19 2016, 9:15 am
regarded as precedent or cited before any CLERK
Indiana Supreme Court
court except for the purpose of establishing Court of Appeals
and Tax Court
the defense of res judicata, collateral
estoppel, or the law of the case.
ATTORNEY FOR APPELLANT ATTORNEYS FOR APPELLEE
Scott Knierim Gregory F. Zoeller
Danville, Indiana Attorney General of Indiana
Paula J. Beller
Deputy Attorney General
Indianapolis, Indiana
IN THE
COURT OF APPEALS OF INDIANA
Christa Spinks, December 19, 2016
Appellant-Defendant, Court of Appeals Case No.
32A04-1605-CR-1165
v. Appeal from the Hendricks
Superior Court
State of Indiana, The Honorable Stephanie Lemay-
Appellee-Plaintiff. Luken, Judge
Trial Court Cause No.
32D05-1507-F6-535
Barnes, Judge.
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Case Summary
[1] Christa Spinks appeals her conviction for Level 6 felony theft. We affirm.
Issue
[2] The sole issue before us is whether there is sufficient evidence to sustain
Spinks’s conviction.
Facts
[3] The evidence most favorable to the conviction is that, on July 13, 2015, Spinks
was employed at an Ace Hardware store in Brownsburg. At the completion of
her shift at 5 p.m. that day, Spinks’s father picked her up and drove her to
Hendricks County Estate Buyers, which is a “buy sell shop.” Tr. p. 105. Justin
Briggs owns that shop, and it is located about one block away from the Ace
Hardware. Spinks carried a yellow bag into the shop. The bag contained a
DeWalt rechargeable drill with two batteries and a charger and two Craftsman
wrench sets. The items appeared to be brand new. Briggs gave Spinks between
$100 and $200 in cash for the items. At retail, the drill normally sold for
$239.99; the batteries, $99.99 each; the charger, $69.99; and the wrench sets
$29.99 each.
[4] Briggs immediately suspected that the items Spinks had brought in were stolen
from the Ace Hardware. At approximately 5:15 p.m. on the same day, Briggs
called Skylar Stevenson, the owner of the Ace Hardware, and asked Stevenson
if he was missing any items from inventory. Stevenson confirmed that a
DeWalt drill, two batteries, a charger, and two sets of Craftsman wrench sets
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were missing from inventory. The SKU numbers on the items Briggs purchased
from Spinks matched the numbers for the items missing from Stevenson’s
inventory, although the SKU numbers were not necessarily unique to the
Brownsburg Ace Hardware store.
[5] Officer Cory Sears of the Brownsburg Police Department spoke with Spinks
about the items she sold to Briggs. She told Officer Sears that the items had
been in her living room for an unknown amount of time. However, Briggs told
her father that she found the drill in a dumpster.
[6] The State charged Spinks with Class A misdemeanor theft and Level 6 felony
theft, based on a prior theft or conversion conviction. After a jury trial, Spinks
was found guilty of Class A misdemeanor theft. Spinks waived jury trial with
respect to the Level 6 felony charge. The trial court found Spinks guilty of that
charge and entered judgment and sentenced her accordingly on that charge
only. Spinks now appeals.
Analysis
[7] Spinks contends there is insufficient evidence to support her theft conviction.
When addressing a claim of insufficient evidence, we must consider only the
probative evidence and reasonable inferences supporting the conviction. Sallee
v. State, 51 N.E.3d 130, 133 (Ind. 2016). It is the fact-finder’s role, not ours, to
assess witness credibility and weigh evidence to determine whether it is
sufficient to support a conviction. Id. “It is not necessary that the evidence
‘overcome every reasonable hypothesis of innocence.’” Id. (quoting Moore v.
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State, 652 N.E.2d 53, 55 (Ind. 1995)). “‘[E]vidence is sufficient if an inference
may reasonably be drawn from it to support the verdict.’” Id. (quoting Drane v.
State, 867 N.E.2d 144, 147 (Ind. 2007)). However, “[e]vidence sufficient only
to establish a mere suspicion of guilt is not sufficient to support a conviction.”
Id. at 135.
[8] Spinks specifically asserts there is insufficient evidence that she took the items
from the Ace Hardware or that she knew they were stolen when she sold them
to Briggs. In order to convict Spinks of theft, the State was required to prove
that she knowingly or intentionally exerted unauthorized control over property
of Ace Hardware, with intent to deprive Ace Hardware of any part of the
property’s value or use. See Ind. Code § 35-43-4-2(a).1 Spinks’s argument goes
to lack of mens rea or intent.
[9] Spinks relies heavily upon Fortson v. State, 919 N.E.2d 1136 (Ind. 2010). In that
case, the defendant was driving a truck that had been reported stolen about six
or seven hours before he was pulled over by police and arrested. There was a
passenger in the truck who was allowed to go free. The defendant denied
having stolen the truck and claimed it had been loaned to him by another
person, but police did not ask who the other person was. The State charged the
defendant with receiving stolen property, and he was convicted of that offense.
1
The offense is elevated from a Class A misdemeanor to a Level 6 felony if a defendant has a prior unrelated
conviction for either theft or criminal conversion. I.C. § 35-43-4-2(a)(1)(C). Spinks makes no argument
regarding the elevation of her offense.
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[10] On appeal, our supreme court reversed the conviction for insufficient evidence.
Fortson, 919 N.E.2d at 1143-44. In doing so, although the case involved a
conviction for receiving stolen property and not theft, the court took the
opportunity to discard the rule allowing for a theft conviction to be supported
solely by the defendant’s unexplained possession of recently stolen property. Id.
at 1143 (overruling Bolton v. State, 254 Ind. 648, 261 N.E.2d 841 (1970)). The
court further explained:
That is to say, the mere unexplained possession of recently stolen
property standing alone does not automatically support a
conviction for theft. Rather, such possession is to be considered
along with the other evidence in a case, such as how recent or
distant in time was the possession from the moment the item was
stolen, and what are the circumstances of the possession (say,
possessing right next door as opposed to many miles away). In
essence, the fact of possession and all the surrounding evidence
about the possession must be assessed to determine whether any
rational juror could find the defendant guilty beyond a
reasonable doubt.
Id. The court also noted that, knowledge that property is stolen may be
established by circumstantial evidence. Id. (quoting Barnett v. State, 834 N.E.2d
169, 172 (Ind. Ct. App. 2005)).
[11] Here, there is no direct evidence that Spinks knew the property she sold to
Briggs had been stolen, such as eyewitness testimony or security camera footage
of her stealing the property or a confession to that effect. However, Fortson
explicitly does not require such direct evidence. And, we readily conclude there
are more pieces to the puzzle here than were present in Fortson—enough pieces
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to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Spinks was guilty of theft. Within
fifteen minutes of completing her shift at Ace Hardware, Spinks sold items to
Briggs at his store about a block away from the Ace Hardware. The items
appeared to be brand new and matched items Stevenson discovered were
missing from Ace Hardware’s inventory. Spinks sold the items for considerably
less than their retail value. Spinks then gave clearly false and inconsistent
explanations for where she had gotten the items from to her father and Officer
Sears. In other words, Spinks had plain and easy access to items identical to
ones missing from Ace Hardware’s inventory and essentially “fenced” them for
cash within minutes of completing her shift. The circumstantial evidence is
overwhelming that Spinks at the least knew the items were stolen and exercised
unauthorized control over them with intent to deprive Ace Hardware of their
value and use. It goes well beyond merely establishing that she possessed
recently stolen property. This supports her conviction for theft.
[12] Spinks attempts to shift suspicion for the theft of Ace Hardware’s property onto
her boyfriend, Tim Hueston. Hueston also was employed by Ace Hardware
and also worked the same shift as her on the day in question and also was given
a ride home after work by her father. Both Briggs and Stevenson had suspicions
that Hueston was involved in theft; he was considered a suspect by Officer
Sears but was never charged with any crime. However, it was Spinks and
Spinks alone who went into Briggs’s store and sold the items to Briggs. The
evidence ties Spinks to the theft, not Hueston. Spinks’s insinuation that
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Hueston was the true thief is an invitation to reweigh the evidence, which we
must decline.
Conclusion
[13] There is sufficient evidence to sustain Spinks’s conviction for Level 6 felony
theft. We affirm.
[14] Affirmed.
Kirsch, J., and Robb, J., concur.
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