Background
Dylan Burton and Kayla Graham, who share children together, had dated periodically between 2010 and 2025. In 2024, Graham pled guilty to felony stalking and was placed on two years of probation. On June 25, 2025, the probation department filed a petition to modify or revoke her probation for failing to report to her probation officer and not participating in substance use treatment. The next day, the Miami Superior Court issued an arrest warrant.
Shortly after the warrant issued, Graham contacted Burton about domestic troubles with another man. On July 9, Burton picked Graham up—knowing she had an active warrant—and drove her around while she gathered belongings from a storage unit. Burton called police to help him retrieve property at the storage unit and told an officer he did not know Graham’s location. The next day, the officer spotted Burton’s vehicle at the same storage facility and arrested Burton and Graham together at a nearby gas station.
The State charged Burton with Class A misdemeanor assisting a criminal, alleging he harbored, concealed, or assisted Graham, a “fugitive from justice,” with intent to hinder her apprehension. Following a bench trial, the court found Burton guilty and sentenced him to time served. Burton appealed, arguing the State failed to prove Graham was a “fugitive from justice” because there was no evidence she had fled across state lines.
The Court’s Holding
The Court of Appeals affirmed Burton’s conviction, departing from nearly forty years of precedent that had required proof of interstate flight for “fugitive from justice” status under Indiana Code section 35-44.1-2-5(a). The court traced the interstate flight requirement to Frost v. State (1986), which had borrowed a definition from extradition law, and through its progeny in Myers v. State (2007) and Lafferty v. State (2009).
Examining the statute’s plain language, the court concluded that “fugitive from justice” unambiguously does not require interstate flight. Citing multiple dictionary definitions, the court found that the ordinary meaning of “fugitive” includes anyone who evades, flees, or hides from officials charged with administering justice—not exclusively someone who crosses state lines. The court emphasized that Indiana does not follow horizontal stare decisis, meaning prior Court of Appeals panels’ interpretations are persuasive but not binding. It also found that Ohio’s Second District Court of Appeals had reached the same conclusion when interpreting a substantially identical statute.
The court further rejected Burton’s legislative acquiescence argument—that the legislature’s failure to amend the statute after Frost showed acceptance of the interstate flight requirement—noting that Indiana’s Supreme Court had held legislative acquiescence is “irrelevant” when plain statutory language controls the analysis.
Key Takeaways
- Indiana’s assisting a criminal statute no longer requires proof that the person assisted fled across state lines. A person with an outstanding arrest warrant who evades apprehension within Indiana qualifies as a “fugitive from justice” under Indiana Code section 35-44.1-2-5(a).
- The decision marks a significant departure from the Frost–Myers–Lafferty line of cases that had governed this area for nearly four decades, demonstrating the practical impact of Indiana’s lack of horizontal stare decisis at the Court of Appeals level.
- Practitioners handling assisting-a-criminal charges should no longer treat interstate flight as an element that the State must prove. The State need only show that the person assisted was evading law enforcement, regardless of whether that evasion involved crossing state boundaries.
Why It Matters
This opinion significantly broadens the scope of Indiana’s assisting a criminal statute by eliminating the interstate flight requirement that practitioners had relied upon since 1986. For Indiana defense attorneys, the loss of the interstate flight element removes what had been a meaningful evidentiary hurdle for prosecutors. For law enforcement and prosecutors, the decision simplifies the proof required when someone harbors or conceals a person wanted on an outstanding warrant.
The case also illustrates how Indiana’s approach to stare decisis at the intermediate appellate level can produce abrupt doctrinal shifts. Because no panel of the Court of Appeals is bound by another’s statutory interpretation, long-settled understandings can be revisited and overturned when a later panel concludes the text demands a different reading. This opinion arrived through a traveling oral argument held at Mississinewa High School, underscoring the educational importance the court placed on the case.