Preview:

ATTORNEY FOR APPELLANT Dustin Houchin Salem, Indiana

ATTORNEYS FOR APPELLEE Steve Carter Attorney General of Indiana J.T. Whitehead Deputy Attorney General Indianapolis, Indiana

In the

Indiana Supreme Court
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No. 36S00-0608-CR-285 ANTHONY R. STOCKELMAN, Appellant (Defendant Below), v. STATE OF INDIANA, Appellee (Plaintiff Below).

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Appeal from the Jackson Circuit Court, No. 36C01-0505-MR-002 The Honorable William E. Vance, Judge _________________________________

June 20, 2007

Shepard, Chief Justice.

Appellant Anthony R. Stockelman pled guilty to charges of murder and child molesting that arose out of the death of ten-year-old Katlyn Maria Collman. Stockelman challenges the propriety of the sentence of life without parole imposed by the trial court for the murder. We affirm.

Katie Collman left her home in Crothersville, Indiana at about 3 p.m. on January 25, 2005, to run an errand for her mother at the local Dollar General Store. She was never seen alive

again. The State Police discovered her body five days later in a waterway at nearby Cypress Lake. The State Police Laboratory matched Stockelman's DNA to swabs taken from the

victim's body, to cigarette butts at the crime scene, and to red carpet fibers taken from her body and from the carpet in the home of Stockelman's mother. A local witness had seen the victim riding in a Ford truck that matched Stockelman's.

The State charged Stockelman with murder, child molesting as a class A felony, and criminal confinement. It requested the death penalty, alleging the victim's age as the aggravating circumstance. A year or so later, Stockelman and the State entered into a plea bargain.

Stockelman agreed to plead guilty to murder and child molesting and to waive his right to have the State submit aggravating circumstances to a jury. The State agreed to drop the death penalty and dismiss the confinement charge. The sentencing was thus left to the court alone. After a hearing involving several witnesses, it imposed life without parole for the murder, followed by thirty years for child molesting.

Stockelman requests that we revise the sentence for murder, citing the provision of Indiana Rule of Appellate Procedure 7(B): "The Court may revise a sentence authorized by statute if, after due consideration of the trial court's decision, the Court finds that the sentence is inappropriate in light of the nature of the offense and the character of the offender." In the main, he contends that the trial court did not adequately recognize or give adequate weight to four mitigating circumstances.

First, Stockelman argues that he had no significant history of prior criminal conduct. His only two convictions were misdemeanors, one twenty years in the past for purchasing beer for his younger brother and the other for battery. The State responds that this record bears some similarity to one we declared adequate for rejecting a claim that the defendant had no significant prior record. Bacher v. State, 722 N.E.2d 799 (Ind. 2000). It also notes that witnesses called by Stockelman during the sentencing hearing testified that he had become "deeper and deeper" into drugs and that he had abused his former wife on multiple occasions, demonstrating prior criminal conduct. (Sentencing Hr'g Tr. at 14, 32.)

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On this record, we find ourselves unable to say that the trial judge erred in rejecting Stockelman's claim that he had lived a relatively crime-free life.

Second, Stockelman says that he committed the crime under the influence of extreme mental or emotional disturbance. Ind. Code Ann.

Download Anthony Stockelman v. State of Indiana.pdf

Indiana Law