Background
Indiana charged Scott Manges with fourteen offenses arising from alleged sexual abuse between 2013 and 2017, including child molesting, incest, sexual misconduct with a minor, and contributing to the delinquency of a minor. The prosecution depended heavily on the complaining witness. During discovery, Manges sought an audio or video recording of her July 2022 initial interview with Plainfield police. He said a police case report indicated that a recording was available, and the Hendricks Circuit Court ordered the State to produce it.
The police department conducted what it described as a comprehensive file review, including work with its information-technology department to retrieve files from the now-retired lead detective’s computer. It reported that no body-camera footage or other recording could be found. The State produced the materials it located and told Manges that the requested recording did not exist in the department’s retained files. Manges moved to dismiss, arguing that the recording was uniquely important to testing the witness’s credibility in a delayed-reporting case with no physical evidence.
The trial court declined to dismiss the charges but imposed a different sanction: it prohibited the complaining witness from testifying at trial. The court reasoned that her near-contemporaneous recorded statement could have been critical impeachment material. The State took an interlocutory appeal, challenging both the sanction and the premise that the missing recording violated Manges’s due-process rights.
The Court’s Holding
The Indiana Court of Appeals reversed. Judge Bradford explained that exclusion is the most extreme discovery sanction because it interferes with a trial’s truth-seeking function. Under Indiana precedent, a court generally should exclude evidence for a discovery violation only when the State acted deliberately or reprehensibly and its conduct caused substantial prejudice that prevented a fair trial. The record contained no allegation or evidence of bad faith. At most, police may have been negligent in retaining potential evidence.
The panel also found the asserted prejudice speculative. Manges had the detailed allegations in the probable-cause affidavit and could depose the witness or police personnel about the interview before trial. He also could cross-examine the State’s witnesses and argue that law enforcement negligently failed to retain evidence. Those alternatives meant the missing recording did not create the real, substantial prejudice required for what the court called the “nuclear option” of excluding the central witness.
The court separately rejected the due-process claim. Indiana applies different rules to materially exculpatory evidence and evidence that is merely potentially useful. The State’s failure to preserve materially exculpatory evidence can violate due process regardless of good faith, but losing merely potentially useful evidence violates due process only when police acted in bad faith. Nothing showed that the recording had apparent exculpatory value before it disappeared. At most, it might have contained impeachment material about the witness’s credibility. Because the recording was only potentially useful and Manges showed no bad faith, its loss did not violate due process.
Key Takeaways
- Excluding a witness is an extraordinary Indiana discovery sanction and ordinarily requires deliberate or reprehensible State conduct plus demonstrated substantial prejudice.
- A court must evaluate real prejudice, not assume that an unavailable interview recording would have supplied useful impeachment or exculpatory evidence.
- Lost evidence that is merely potentially useful supports a due-process claim only if the defendant proves police bad faith.
Why It Matters
The decision gives Indiana trial courts and criminal practitioners a concrete framework for disputes involving missing digital evidence. A negligent retention failure can be serious without automatically justifying a sanction that effectively disables the prosecution. Before excluding a witness, the court must connect the discovery failure to actual unfairness and consider whether depositions, cross-examination, argument, or other measures can reduce the harm.
Defense counsel should develop evidence showing what was recorded, why its favorable value was apparent, and why comparable information cannot be obtained elsewhere. Prosecutors and police agencies, meanwhile, should preserve interview media and document retrieval efforts. Although the State prevailed here, the opinion does not excuse poor retention practices; it holds that the remedy must track proven culpability and prejudice. The case returns to the trial court for further proceedings with the complaining witness permitted to testify.