After Miles Toran was convicted of murder and attempted
murder in violation of Indiana Code §§ 35-42-1-1 & 35-41-5-1(a) and
sentenced “to sixty-five years for murder and thirty years for attempted
murder, with the terms to be served concurrently for a total executed sentence
of sixty-five years”, he appealed. Toran v. State, 2013 WL 5303734 (Indiana
Court of Appeals 2013).
This, according to the opinion, is how the case arose:
Sharon and Miles Toran were married in May 2008 and had
two daughters together, born in September 2009 and March 2011. At some point,
the couple separated and divorce proceedings were initiated. Toran, who was on
active duty in the Air Force, lived in Virginia, while Sharon moved with her
daughters back to Indianapolis.
Toran returned to Indianapolis on Tuesday,
April 17, 2012, as there was a custody hearing scheduled for later that week.
While in town, he stayed with his parents and siblings. . . . Toran left the
home on Walma Court around 8:00 that evening and was not seen by his family
until sometime around 10:30, when he came home, took a shower, and then left
again. . . .
Sharon was staying with the girls at her parents'
home about fourteen minutes away on North Layman Avenue. Around 10:00 p.m.,
Jonathon Perry, Sharon's brother, waited on the front porch of the Layman
residence. Sharon drove up in her van shortly thereafter with her two young
daughters and parked along the street in front of the house. Perry retrieved
the house key from her and went inside with his friend, while Sharon stayed
outside to collect her daughters.
Shortly after entering the home and heading to the
basement, Perry and his friend heard screaming. As Perry ran outside and toward
the van, he heard his two-and-one-half-year-old niece yell, `daddy’, and then
Sharon say, `don't do this, Miles.’ . . . Perry ran around the front of the van
and toward the passenger side, where he encountered Toran, who was dressed in
dark clothing, wearing glasses, and armed with a rifle.
Sharon and the girls were closed inside the van.
Toran immediately turned his attention . . . toward Perry and shot Perry once
with the rifle at close range. The shot hit Perry's upper leg near his waist
and broke his femur, taking Perry directly to the ground. Toran then shot
multiple times through the window of the van's sliding door, shooting Sharon
three times while she was within arm's reach of the children, who were still
confined in their car seats. . . .
Perry observed Toran run behind a house
on the other side of the street and then quickly speed away southbound in a
black Honda or Acura. Police received 911 calls at 10:18 p.m. Sharon was found
dead at the scene, and Perry suffered serious injury to his leg, requiring at
least a week-long hospital stay. At the scene, Perry informed police of the
shooter's identity and described the getaway car and direction of travel.
Toran v. State, supra.
The opinion also notes that at around
3:00 a.m., Toran went to the
Indianapolis City-County Building to make a statement in which he denied any
involvement in the shooting. He told police he was separated from his wife and
was in town for a custody hearing. He claimed he was nowhere near the Layman
residence and had spent the evening at his parent's house and also visiting his
sister at the hospital.
Cellphone records, however, indicated
transmissions from his phone near the area of the shooting in the hour before
and within minutes of the shooting. Video surveillance at the hospital also
revealed that he was not at the hospital visiting his sister around the time of
the shooting.
Toran v. State, supra.
Toran raised several arguments on appeal, only one of which
is examined here. Toran argued that the
trial judge erred when he allowed the prosecution to introduce evidence
obtained from his smartphone. The
evidence in question was four articles downloaded on the phone from the
internet within about ten hours of the shootings. Each of the articles touched
in some manner on the topic of murder. Toran challenges the admissibility of this
evidence on the basis of foundation and relevance.
Toran v. State, supra. In a footnote, the court explains that
State's Exhibit 40 was an article
setting forth the penalties for murder in New South Wales, Australia; 41 was an
article suggesting that the evidence in the Scott Peterson murder trial did not
support the conviction; 42 was the beginning of an article about writing murder
mysteries; and 43 was an article entitled, `How to Show Murder Evidence to a
Jury.’
Toran v. State, supra.
Toran pointed out that “[t]he witness supporting the admission of these
exhibits could not say if [he] had read these articles or even how long the
articles appeared on the screen of the cell phone”. Toran v. State, supra.
In his appeal, Toran claimed the prosecution did not
establish an adequate foundation to support admitting the articles and did not
show they were relevant to issues in the case.
Toran v. State, supra. As Wikipedia notes, in evidence law a
“foundation is sufficient preliminary evidence of
the authenticity and relevance for the admission of
material evidence in the form of exhibits”.
The Court of Appeals noted that Toran “seems to argue that a
foundation for this evidence was not properly laid because the State could not
establish whether [he] actually read the articles or even how long each
appeared on the screen of his phone.” Toran
v. State, supra. It explained that
Rule 901(a) of the Indiana Rules of Evidence
provides that `[t]he requirement of
authentication or identification as a condition precedent to admissibility is
satisfied by evidence sufficient to support a finding that the matter in
question is what its proponent claims.’ `Absolute proof of authenticity is not
required.’ Fry v. State, 885 N.E.2d 742 (Indiana Court of
Appeals 2008). . . . When evidence establishes a reasonable probability that it
is what it is claimed to be, a sufficient foundation has been laid. Fry v. State, supra. . . .
Toran v. State, supra. For more on authentication, check out this
prior post.
As to authentication in this case, the Court of Appeals
noted that
[l]etters and words set down by
electronic recording and other forms of data compilation are included
within Rule 901. Hape v. State, 903 N.E.2d 977 (Indiana
Court of Appeals 2009). . . Thus, in order to be admissible,
electronic data recorded on a cellphone must be authenticated
separately from the phone. Hape v. State, supra.
The authentication of data recordings
obtained from a cellphone is the same as for those obtained from a
personal computer and is satisfied by a showing that the images
contained in the exhibits were recovered from the defendant's phone. .
. .
Toran v. State, supra.
Here, as the prosecution’s brief on appeal notes, at his
trial
forensic investigator Brett Seach
testified that he retrieved the data from [Toran’s] cellphone. . . . Officer
Seach testified that he found four images and related metadata on the phone
from murder related websites which had been accessed on the day [Toran] killed Sharon. . . .
Brief of Appellee, Toran
v. State, 2013 WL 3976707.
In its opinion, the Court of Appeals explained that Toran
did not
dispute that the evidence in question
was retrieved from his smartphone, as indicated by testimony at trial.
Moreover, he did not challenge Detective Brett Search's [sic] technical capabilities or the procedures employed in
retrieving and producing reproductions of the data/images found on the micro-SD
card from the phone.
His entire argument is that the State
could not establish that he was the one who searched for these articles on his
phone or that he ever read them. This goes to the weight of the evidence, not
foundation. The State laid a sufficient foundation for this evidence.
Toran v. State, supra.
Toran also argued that the articles were not evidence that
was relevant to the issues in the trial.
Toran v. State, supra. The court explained that relevant evidence is
defined as `evidence having any
tendency to make the existence of any fact that is of consequence to the
determination of the action more probable or less probable than it would be
without the evidence.’ Indiana Rule of Evidence 401.
To be relevant, the evidence at issue
need only have `some tendency, however slight, to make the existence of a
material fact more or less probable, or tend to shed any light upon the guilt
or innocence of the accused.’ Smith v. State, 982 N.E.2d 393
(Indiana Court of Appeals 2013). . . . This is a `rather low threshold’. Smith v. State, supra.
Toran v. State, supra.
The Court of Appeals rejected Toran’s argument on
relevance:
The evidence in question indicates that
Toran's smartphone was used to access webpages related to murder (that is, the
penalty for murder and defending a murder charge) approximately ten hours
before the shooting. This circumstantial evidence had at least some tendency to
establish Toran's identity as the shooter and to show his intent and motive.
The appropriate weight to be given this
evidence was properly left for the jury to decide. The trial court did not
abuse its discretion by allowing the exhibits into evidence over Toran's
objection.
Toran v. State, supra.
As an aside, Toran also argued that his sentence was
excessive because “there was nothing about the offense or the offender that
justified the maximum sentence.” Toran v. State, supra. The Court of Appeals did not agree. It noted, first, that he
did not receive the maximum sentence,
as his sentences could well have been
ordered to be served consecutively. In fact, the State asked the trial
court to impose eighty-five years (consecutive sentences of fifty-five and
thirty years). The trial court rejected the State's request. . . .
Toran v. State, supra.
The court also addressed the propriety, as such, of the
sentence imposed on him:
Turning to the nature of the offenses,
we observe that there are significant aggravating circumstances. In addition to
the two direct victims in this case, Toran put his own young daughters in
harm's way by firing multiple shots into the van in which they were restrained
in close proximity to Sharon. Even the pleas from his two-and-one-half-year-old
daughter did not deter Toran from making the child a witness to her mother's
gruesome murder at the hands of her own father.
After shooting Sharon multiple times,
Toran fled the scene without any apparent concern for his children, who
remained in the shot-up van with their dying mother. Further, as found by the
trial court, there appears to have been a high degree of planning that went
into Sharon's murder.
Toran v. State, supra. It therefore held that the sentence was
appropriate. Toran v. State, supra.
This contemporaneous news story provides some more
information about the crimes.
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