Corbett v. State

179 N.E.3d 475

Winston E. CORBETT, Appellant-Defendant,

v.STATE of Indiana, Appellee-Plaintiff

Court of Appeals Case No. 21A-CR-118

Court of Appeals of Indiana.

FILED November 10, 2021

Attorney for Appellant: Donald R. Shuler, Barkes, Kolbus, Rife & Schuler, LLP, Goshen, Indiana

Attorneys for Appellee: Theodore E. Rokita, Attorney General, Ellen H. Meilaender, Supervising Deputy Attorney General, Indianapolis, Indiana

Vaidik, Judge.

Case Summary

[1] Just after midnight on October 9, 2011, Jim and Linda Miller were brutally attacked in their home in Goshen, Indiana. When police arrived at the home, Jim was dead in the driveway, having been stabbed at least fifty times. Linda survived with serious injuries. Although DNA evidence was collected from the home, no suspect was identified, and the case grew cold.

[2] Seven years later, a detective at the Goshen Police Department sent the DNA evidence to a genealogy company for testing and received Winston Corbett's name as a possible lead. Corbett, who at the time of the attack was sixteen and living with his parents less than a mile from the Millers, had recently been discharged from the United States Navy and had returned to Goshen to live with his mother. Further investigation of Corbett led law enforcement to conduct a trash search at his home, and DNA taken from that search was consistent with the DNA from the crime scene. Police then obtained a search warrant for Corbett's DNA, and again testing revealed Corbett's DNA was consistent with the DNA from the crime scene.

[3] Corbett was charged with and convicted of the murder of Jim and the attempted murder of Linda and sentenced to 115 years in prison. He now appeals, raising a variety of challenges to his conviction and asserting his sentence is inappropriate. Finding no reversible error and that his sentence is not inappropriate, we affirm.

Facts and Procedural History

[4] In 2011, Jim and Linda lived in Goshen with their two teenage children. In the early morning of October 9, Jim and Linda were awake, waiting for their children to return home from a band competition. A little after midnight, Linda went into the bathroom to get ready for bed. She noticed the bathroom door move and was suddenly hit with a sharp object on the side of her head. Linda screamed as her attacker repeatedly stabbed her in the shoulder, back, and head. Hearing Linda, Jim entered the adjoining bedroom, and the attacker began assaulting Jim. Linda then entered the bedroom and tried to hit the attacker with one of the lamps in the bedroom. However, she was unsuccessful and retreated to the bathroom. The attacker continued his assault on Jim, eventually forcing him out of the bedroom. Linda, bleeding severely, then left the bathroom and called 911.

[5] Officers Brandon Miller¹ and Jeremy Welker of the Goshen Police Department were the first to arrive on the scene. Both officers entered the house and found Linda in the bedroom "covered in blood." Tr. Vol. II p. 156. Officer Miller continued to search the house, following a blood trail that led into the garage. From there he saw Jim's body at the end of the driveway. Jim was lying "lifeless" and was "completely covered in blood." Id. at 159, 211. He was declared dead at the scene. Linda was taken to Goshen General Hospital in critical condition. She suffered lacerations to her face, lips, ears, scalp, hands, shoulders, and back. She had a left temporal bone fracture and a hematoma caused by a punctured lung. A chest tube was inserted to treat the punctured lung, and Linda underwent several surgeries to treat the lacerations.

[6] Linda was interviewed at the hospital and described the attacker as around 5’10’’, slim, black haired, fair skinned, and "twenty to twenty-five" or possibly "an upper high school classman." Ex. C, p. 13. An exterior search of the Millers’ home revealed a window screen had been cut along the sides, and investigators believed this to be the attacker's point of entry. Evidence technicians and a blood-spatter expert were brought in to analyze the extensive bloodstain evidence in the home. Six areas of the home had bloodstain evidence: the bathroom, bedroom, hallway, foyer, garage, and driveway. Swabs were taken of the bloodstain evidence, including swabs from the screen-door handle, the baseboard of the foyer, and pooled blood near Jim's body. Later DNA testing by the Indiana State Police Laboratory revealed the blood from the foyer contained a single-source DNA profile "consistent" with an unknown individual ("Unknown Male 2"). Tr. Vol. VII p. 201. Blood from the screen door showed a mix of DNA profiles, one of which was "consistent" with Unknown Male 2. Id. at 203. Blood from near Jim's body also contained a mix of DNA, from which Unknown Male 2 "could not be excluded." Id. at 204.

[7] Officers also spoke with the Millers’ neighbors, three of whom reported suspicious activity at their homes around the time of the Miller attack. Two neighbors had window screens cut like the screen at the Millers’ home. Another neighbor reported he heard noise in his home that night and found his front door ajar.

[8] Police ran the DNA from the crime scene through the police database but found no match, and the investigation stalled. In 2018, Detective Nick McCloughen of the Goshen Police Department became the lead investigator of the case. Detective McCloughen contacted a private company—Parabon Nanolabs—regarding "genetic DNA testing" of the samples from the crime scene. Appellant's App. Vol. II p. 33. On October 16, 2018, Parabon provided Corbett's name to Detective McCloughen as an "investigative lead." Supp. Ex. A, p. 17. Detective McCloughen investigated Corbett and discovered that at the time of the attack he lived less than a mile from the Millers, was sixteen years old, and matched Linda's physical description of the attacker. Further investigation revealed Corbett had recently been discharged from the United States Navy and had returned to Goshen to live with his mother. At this point, Detective McCloughen wanted to confirm Corbett's current address, so he arranged a "knock and talk" conducted by Detective Chuck Osterday. Detective Osterday went to Corbett's address and, walking the typical path to the front door, knocked. Corbett answered, and he and Detective Osterday talked briefly. The next day, law enforcement arranged for a trash pull from Corbett's home. Several items from the trash likely to contain DNA—a used bandage, gum, and drink cans—were sent to the Indiana State Police Laboratory for analysis. The lab determined the DNA on those items was consistent with Unknown Male 2.

[9] Detective McCloughen then applied for a search warrant for Corbett's DNA. His probable-cause affidavit provided in part,

On the 16th day of October, 2018, this Affiant received an investigative lead regarding the unknown male DNA. The information gave the name of a potential suspect, Winston E. Corbett. Through investigation, it was found Winston E. Corbett lived at 2206 S. Main Steet Goshen, IN at the time of the homicide. Based on Google Earth the approximate distance from 2206 S. Main St. to 1736 Wildwood Ct. is .6 miles. Based on Winston E. Corbett's one and only operator's license number (OLN) that was issued on 7/31/12, Winston E. Corbett was 6 foot tall and weighed 130 pounds. Winston E. Corbett's hair color is shown as brown but in the BMV photograph it appears to be very dark brown or black hair color. Winston E. Corbett would have been 16 years of age at the time of the homicide. The information Linda provided on October 13, 2011, about the suspect were similar characteristics to Winston E. Corbett at the time of the murder.

On the 19th day of October, 2018 this Affiant had received information from the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) that Winston E. Corbett had completed his duties in the Navy in September of 2018. This Affiant had found Winston E. Corbett's mother, Karis Corbett, had moved into the residence of 17515 Bramblewood Drive Goshen, IN. The Investigator for NCIS, Ryan Gwozdz, provided Winston E. Corbett's forwarding address to be 17515 Bramblewood Drive Goshen, IN.

On the 22nd day of October, 2018, Detective Osterday went to the address of 17515 Bramblewood Drive Goshen, IN to see if Winston E. Corbett was living at this address. Detective Osterday knocked on the door of 17515 Bramblewood Drive Goshen, IN. A male answered the door and identified himself as Winston Corbett.

* * * *

On the 23rd day of October, 2018, at approximately 0800 hours Detective Carich, Detective Harder and this Affiant met with Borden's trash service at the intersection of County Road 27 and County Road 40. The hopper to the trash truck was cleaned out so only trash from 17515 Bramblewood would be in the hopper. Det. Carich rode in the Borden's trash truck with the employee, Steve Lanko, to collect the trash from 17515 Bramblewood, Goshen. Once Det. Carich and Steve Lanko came back to the intersection of County Road 27 and County Road 40, the trash items were removed from the hopper and placed into a truck this Affiant was driving. The trash was taken to a secured location known to this Affiant where the contents of the trash were examined. The trash had several large trash bags that had contents that appeared to be from kitchen trash. There was also a small plastic "Martin's" grocery bag that had trash in it. It appeared to this Affiant and the other two detectives that the Martin's bag would be consistent with a bathroom or a bedroom trash due to its size and contents. Items located inside the Martin's grocery bag and collected for evidence were: a used Band-Aid, an empty Pepsi can, three (3) empty Green Arizona Tea bottles, an empty Dr. Pepper can, an empty Wicked Grove Hard Cider bottle, a piece of chewed gum, boarding tickets from Seattle to Chicago and Chicago to South Bend with the name of "CORBETT/WINSTONE", luggage tags with the name of "CORBETT/WINS", a receipt from the Navy Exchange and a

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