Pursuant to Ind.Appellate Rule 65(D), Aug 19 2013, 5:38 am
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:
ROBERT D. WICKENS GREGORY F. ZOELLER
Wickens & Wickens, LLC Attorney General of Indiana
Greensburg, Indiana
JODI KATHRYN STEIN
Deputy Attorney General
Indianapolis, Indiana
IN THE
COURT OF APPEALS OF INDIANA
WALDO LYNN JONES, JR., )
)
Appellant-Defendant, )
)
vs. ) No. 16A04-1301-CR-12
)
STATE OF INDIANA, )
)
Appellee-Plaintiff. )
APPEAL FROM THE DECATUR SUPERIOR COURT
The Honorable Matthew D. Bailey, Judge
Cause No. 16D01-1106-FA-308
August 19, 2013
MEMORANDUM DECISION – NOT FOR PUBLICATION
BARNES, Judge
Case Summary
Waldo Jones, Jr., appeals his sixty-year executed sentence for murder. We affirm.
Issue
The sole issue before the court is whether Jones’s sentence is inappropriate.
Facts
The evening of June 2, 2011, Jones and his girlfriend, Tasha Parsons, woke up
Parsons’s twelve-year-old son, D.P., because they believed that D.P. had hidden Jones’s
illegally obtained prescription drugs. Jones had been living with Parsons for
approximately a year and was helping take care of Parsons’s three children. Both Jones
and Parsons began to viciously beat D.P. in order to compel him to admit where the drugs
were. Over the course of twelve hours from that night into the next day, June 3, 2011,
D.P. was repeatedly beaten and tortured:
. . . . [A] cooler was used to pound [D.P.]’s head into the
floor. A coffee table was used to strike [D.P.]’s head. [D.P.]
was kicked and stomped and punched. He was hit with a belt.
He was put in the cellar. His head was submerged in bath
water at [least] three or four times. His head was held under
running water. He was again kicked and burned with
cigarettes.
Tr. p. 86.
Parsons’s two other children, who were seven and eight years old at the time, were
in the household during the beating. At one point, the eight-year-old child woke up from
a nap, looked up from underneath the covers, and saw D.P.’s face covered in blood.
Jones left the residence on June 3, 2011, and spoke with a friend, Kristi Schofner, about
D.P.’s beating; Schofner called the police.
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Officers from the Greensburg Police Department and the Indiana State Police
along with emergency personnel were dispatched to Parsons’s house and found D.P.
dead. Parsons and her two other children were still in the house. D.P. had injuries over
ninety percent of his body, and the Marion County Coroner later determined that the
cause of death was from “multiple blunt force traumatic injuries from head to toe with
partial thickness thermal burns to the face.” Id. at 43. The officers observed blood in
various places inside the house. Officers transported Parsons to the Greensburg Police
Station for questioning and, after locating Jones, transported him, too. Jones indicated
that Parsons was the one who beat D.P.; he alluded to some participation but then
retracted the statements. During Parsons’s initial interview, she indicated that Jones was
not involved in the death of D.P.; however, during the second interview on June 4, 2011,
Parsons admitted that she and Jones beat D.P. for a period of twelve hours because they
believed that D.P. had hidden some pills.
Jones was initially charged with Class A felony neglect of a dependent. The State
amended the charges to include murder and to seek a sentence of life without parole
(“LWOP”). On October 11, 2012, Jones entered a conditional guilty plea agreement
where he pled guilty to murder, and the State dismissed the Class A felony neglect of a
dependent charge and the LWOP enhancement. The court sentenced Jones to sixty years
executed. Jones now appeals.
Analysis
We examine whether Jones’s sixty-year executed sentence is inappropriate under
Indiana Appellate Rule 7(B) in light of his character and the nature of the offense. Jones
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claims that his sentence should include ten years suspended to probation. He makes
arguments to his character, but provides no claims to the nature of the offense and,
therefore, waives the argument. See Anderson v. State, 989 N.E.2d 823 (Ind. Ct. App.
2013). Despite his waiver, we will address his claim.
Although Rule 7(B) does not require us to be “extremely” deferential to a trial
court’s sentencing decision, we still must give due consideration to that decision.
Rutherford v. State, 866 N.E.2d 867, 873 (Ind. Ct. App. 2007). We also understand and
recognize the unique perspective a trial court brings to its sentencing decisions. Id.
“Additionally, a defendant bears the burden of persuading the appellate court that his or
her sentence is inappropriate.” Id.
The principal role of Rule 7(B) review “should be to attempt to leaven the outliers,
and identify some guiding principles for trial courts and those charged with improvement
of the sentencing statutes, but not to achieve a perceived ‘correct’ result in each case.”
Cardwell v. State, 895 N.E.2d 1219, 1225 (Ind. 2008). We “should focus on the forest—
the aggregate sentence—rather than the trees—consecutive or concurrent, number of
counts, or length of the sentence on any individual count.” Id. Whether a sentence is
inappropriate ultimately turns on the culpability of the defendant, the severity of the
crime, the damage done to others, and myriad other factors that come to light in a given
case. Id. at 1224. When reviewing the appropriateness of a sentence under Rule 7(B),
we may consider all aspects of the penal consequences imposed by the trial court in
sentencing the defendant, including whether a portion of the sentence was suspended.
Davidson v. State, 926 N.E.2d 1023, 1025 (Ind. 2010).
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In regard to his character, Jones claims that a lesser sentence is warranted because
of his guilty plea and expression of remorse for his actions. We disagree. Jones’s guilty
plea was not significant because he waited until three weeks before trial to plead guilty
and benefited with the dismissal of the Class A felony neglect of a dependent charge and
the LWOP enhancement. Further, Jones has had prior convictions related to substance
abuse, an area that played a significant role in the current egregious offense. He had
previous opportunities to address his substance abuse problem, but failed to take any
actions. Jones’s additional argument that with probation, he will have a longer period of
supervision to “better ensure that [he] is not a threat to society and provide a smoother
transition . . . to society,” is irrelevant to this analysis. Appellant’s Br. p. 8.
The court evaluated several factors to the nature of the offense, an area Jones
failed to argue. The most significant aggravator was “the harm, injury, loss or damage
suffered by the victim . . . [which] was significant and greater than the elements
necessary to prove the commission of the offense.” Tr. p. 85. The brutal and heinous
torture of D.P. was committed in D.P.’s own home, a place where a child should feel
safe, and in the presence of other children. Further, Jones was in a position of care,
custody, or control of D.P. when he committed the crime.
Conclusion
Jones’s character and the egregious nature of the offense were sufficient to warrant
his sentence. We affirm.
Affirmed.
KIRSCH, J., and VAIDIK, J., concur.
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