Eric Williams v. State of Indiana (mem. dec.)

MEMORANDUM DECISION
Jul 16 2015, 8:53 am
Pursuant to Ind. Appellate Rule 65(D), this
Memorandum Decision shall not be regarded as
precedent or cited before any court except for the
purpose of establishing the defense of res judicata,
collateral estoppel, or the law of the case.
ATTORNEY FOR APPELLANT ATTORNEYS FOR APPELLEE
Suzy St. John Gregory F. Zoeller
Marion County Public Defender Attorney General of Indiana
Indianapolis, Indiana
Jesse R. Drum
Deputy Attorney General
Indianapolis, Indiana
IN THE
COURT OF APPEALS OF INDIANA
Eric Williams, July 16, 2015
Appellant-Defendant, Court of Appeals Case No.
49A02-1410-CR-761
v. Appeal from the Marion Superior
Court
The Honorable Amy Jones, Judge
State of Indiana, Case No. 49G08-1407-CM-36720
Appellee-Plaintiff,
Robb, Judge.
Case Summary and Issue
[1] Following a bench trial, Eric Williams was convicted of public intoxication, a
Class B misdemeanor, and sentenced to 178 days of probation. Williams
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appeals his conviction, raising one issue for our review: whether the State
provided sufficient evidence of endangerment to support his conviction.
Concluding there was sufficient evidence that Williams was endangering his
own life, we affirm.
Facts and Procedural History
[2] Williams suffered a traumatic brain injury at some point he cannot recall due to
the injury. The injury causes Williams to have slurred speech and an unsteady
gait and limits movement in his right arm. Falling down is a “normal part of
[his] life” following the injury. Transcript at 22.
[3] In the afternoon of July 24, 2014, Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department
Officer Ernest Goss responded to a dispatch about a possibly intoxicated person
urinating in the 2800 block of LaSalle Street. Officer Goss described that area
of town as “a pretty high crime area . . . we’ve had lots of robberies and thefts of
people . . . .” Transcript at 8. Officer Goss also described that portion of
LaSalle Street as a frequently traveled road with sidewalks and stop signs.
When Officer Goss arrived, he found Williams, with whom he was familiar,
“stumbling in the middle of the street, very unbalanced . . . .” Id. “He was
coming south on LaSalle Street in the middle of the street . . . he was just going
straight down the street . . . .” Id. at 23. “He had urinated himself, he smelled
of alcoholic beverage, his eyes were bloodshot.” Id. at 9. Officer Goss was
concerned for Williams’s safety because “he couldn’t maintain his balance; he
had fallen several times just in questioning. . . . The fact that he was in a very
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rough neighborhood . . . lead [sic] me to the concerns of his well-being . . . .”
Id. at 10. Officer Goss had Williams sit down for his own safety after he fell
down during the investigation. Although Officer Goss was aware that Williams
had suffered a traumatic brain injury, he was unaware of the physical
manifestations of that injury; “on of all [sic] my other runnings in he’s actually
had alcohol in his system. I have not had to arrest him before because I’ve had
other members which to take him home however, once he has saturated his
pants nobody wanted to take him home.” Id. at 13.
[4] The State charged Williams with public intoxication, a Class B misdemeanor,
for being in a state of intoxication in a public place and endangering his life or
the life another person, or breaching the peace or being in imminent danger of
breaching the peace. At the bench trial, Officer Goss testified to the events as
described above. Williams testified in his own defense, asserting that the
stumbling, falling, and slurred speech was because of his injury, denying
alcohol use, and stating that he had been crossing LaSalle Street on his way
home. Williams admitted he “maybe did” urinate on himself and was “not
sure” whether there were cars on the road that barely avoided hitting him that
day. Id. at 22-23. At the conclusion of the bench trial, the trial court found
Williams guilty, stating:
Understanding that many of the signs of intoxication are also
symptoms of and signs of traumatic brain injury that Mr. Williams
undoubtedly has however, when you couple those things with the odor
of alcohol, the sign that he had soiled himself at some point in time
while he was there with the officer, that he was walking – that the
officer did observe him walking down the middle of the roadway. It is
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a frequently traveled roadway, there were cars around that were
driving on the road. That the officer actually did observe him fall
during the course of the investigation and felt that it was appropriate to
no longer allow him to stand for his own safety reasons. Um, that he
did have him sit down while he conducted the remainder of this
investigation. He also noticed that his eyes were bloodshot, as well.
That those are things that are not necessary, um, those factors are not
necessarily attributable to the traumatic brain injury. Understanding
Mr. Williams gait issues, his lack of mobility, um, his slurred speech,
um, that those are all things that are signs of a traumatic injury.
However, when you couple those with the other observations, I do
believe the State has proven beyond a reasonable doubt that he was
intoxicated on that date. I find that the testimony is a little more
reliable I think coming from the officer, as far as, where he was located
in the street versus what Mr. Williams may or may not recall and how
clearly he is able to recall it due to the level of intoxication on that
particular day. That he wasn’t just simply crossing the street, that he
was wandering the middle of the roadway, that is traveled and was
being traveled by vehicles that day. And so, I’m going to find that the
State has met their burden and find that you’re guilty of Public
Intoxication as a Class B Misdemeanor.
Id. at 26-27. Williams now appeals.
Discussion and Decision
I. Standard of Review
[5] When we review the sufficiency of the evidence supporting a criminal
conviction, we neither reweigh evidence nor judge the credibility of witnesses.
Bailey v. State, 907 N.E.2d 1003, 1005 (Ind. 2009). We only consider “the
evidence supporting the judgment and any reasonable inferences that can be
drawn from such evidence.” Id. (quoting Henley v. State, 881 N.E.2d 639, 652
(Ind. 2008)). We will affirm a conviction if there is substantial evidence of
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probative value supporting each element of the offense such that a reasonable
trier of fact could have found the defendant guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.
Id.
II. Proof of Endangerment
[6] A person commits public intoxication if he is in a public place in a state of
intoxication and endangers his own life or the life of another person, breaches
the peace or is in imminent danger of breaching the peace, or harasses, annoys,
or alarms another person. Ind. Code § 7.1-5-1-3. Although Williams denied
being intoxicated at his bench trial, he does not challenge the trial court’s
finding of intoxication on appeal. Instead, he challenges only the trial court’s
finding that the State proved he actually endangered himself by his conduct.
[7] The public intoxication statute does not define “endangerment,” but in Davis v.
State, 13 N.E.3d 500 (Ind. Ct. App. 2014), this court surveyed several cases
decided under the amended public intoxication statute and concluded:
The common thread in these cases is past or present conduct by the
defendant did or did not place life in danger. While the statute does
not require that actual harm or injury occur, some action by the
defendant constituting endangerment of the life of the defendant or
another person must be shown. . . . Were it otherwise, citizens could
be convicted for possible, future conduct.
Id. at 503. Stated differently, the defendant’s act must create an actual present
danger, rather than some theoretical or hypothetical danger which may later
manifest itself. Williams posits that the State did not prove that walking in the
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street caused an actual danger and that his conviction is based upon
speculation. We disagree.
[8] In Sesay v. State, 5 N.E.3d 478, 485-86 (Ind. Ct. App. 2014), trans. denied, we
held that the defendant’s conduct of standing near the edge of a road alongside
a disabled vehicle did not prove endangerment despite the State’s assertions that
he could have fallen into the road or been hit by a car. We noted that one of
the reasons for amending the public intoxication statute to add the conduct
elements was “to further the public policy of encouraging people to avoid
driving while intoxicated and instead walk, take a cab or bus, or catch a ride
home with a designated driver . . . .” Id. at 485. If the defendant was
endangering his life by standing several feet off the road, “then every
intoxicated person who chooses not to drive but instead to walk home along a
sidewalk, stand near the road to hail a cab, or wait for public transportation at a
bus stop is guilty of public intoxication . . . .” Id. We further noted that “it is
the conduct of the intoxicated person that must cause the endangerment,” such
that concern over, for instance, an erratic driver hitting the defendant as he
stood a safe distance off the road was insufficient to prove endangerment. Id.
[9] Williams, unlike the defendant in Sesay, was not conducting himself in an
otherwise safe manner despite his intoxication. Officer Goss testified Williams
was walking down the middle of a street, on a street that is frequently traveled,
and on which he saw a few cars during his investigation. Crediting Officer
Goss’s testimony, as the trial court did, Williams was not merely crossing from
one side of the street to the other, but walking with the direction of traffic.
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LaSalle Street has sidewalks, so walking in the street, even alongside the curb,
was not necessary. It is not mere speculation that Williams could be in danger;
it is evidence that he was in actual danger, even if nothing untoward had yet
befallen him. Even if we disregard the evidence of his stumbling and falling as
symptoms of his traumatic brain injury, it is not necessarily the manner in which
he was walking but the place he was walking that proves endangerment.1
Conclusion
[10] The State presented sufficient evidence from which the trial court could find
Williams endangered himself to support Williams’s conviction of public
intoxication. His conviction is therefore affirmed.
[11] Affirmed.
May, J., and Mathias, J., concur.
1
Thus, we need not address Williams’s contention that because of his injury, his balance issues were
involuntary.
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