Patrick L. Thompson
HANCOCK COUNTY — The first major trial of the new year was set to open in Hancock County Superior Court I earlier this week. The trial, surrounding a county man who has been accused of raping a teenage girl however, never made it to opening arguments.
Officials from the prosecutor’s office discovered a procedural mistake by the court associated with the jury and had to ask the court for a continuance.
A mistrial was called by fill-in judge Daniel Phlum out of Fayette County after officials from the prosecutor’s office noted several jurors had not been assigned the proper identification number within their interview section.
“In my 15 years of courtroom and trial experience I’ve never seen something like this happen,” Hancock County Chief Deputy Prosecutor Aimee Herring said. “The work that was supposed to be done with this was done haphazardly.”
Prospective juries are identified by assigned numbers given by the court instead of their names, prosecutor Brent Eaton said. The prospective jurors are then placed into sections and interviewed individually by the defense attorney as well as the by the prosecuting attorney before any are selected by number.
The courtroom mistake was discovered after 10 jurors had already been chosen from the pool Herring said, making it impossible to move forward with the trial. Due to error, the case has been postponed until March.
“What makes this so bad is we now have justice delayed,” Eaton said. “We don’t even know if our victim or other witnesses will be available in three months.”
Both Eaton and Herring noted that, had they gone on with the trial, any judgement would easily have been overturned on appeal once the procedural error had been brought to light.
“The mistake that was made was a very basic courtroom procedure by the court and should have never happened,” Eaton said.
The trial was being overseen by an out-of-county judge because the court’s elected Judge, D.J. Davis, is still not able to do the job fully after leaving the bench in April 2022 for health reasons.
In an email to the Daily Reporter Judge Davis stated that, while not in the courtroom during the selection of the jury, he was informed there was not an issue with the jury pool, but rather the order in which the prospective jurors were sat.
“For example, if 75 prospective jurors are pooled for a jury trial, then each juror is given a draw number between 1 and 75 based upon the order in which they are drawn,” Davis said.
He went on to say that a juror identified as number 5678 might draw number 1 and a juror identified as number 1234 might draw number 53.
“Juror panels are to be sat in order of the draw number and not by juror ID numbers,” Davis said. “It was an unfortunate error.”
Nobody is more disappointed than the victim and the prosecutor’s staff, Eaton said, as they’ve worked and waited for over two years to get the case to trial.
The case surrounds Patrick L. Thompson, 39, who lived in the 5000 block of West Stonehaven Lane, New Palestine when the incident occurred. He faces 13 charges — including multiple felony counts of rape and sexual misconduct — stemming from an incident involving alcohol and a girl under the age of 16, officials said.
According to a probable cause affidavit, on Jan. 2, 2021 officers from the New Palestine Police Department were asked to investigate a report of sexual assault that had occurred in the early morning hours that day at a home on West Stonehaven Lane in New Palestine.
The report states a girl who was under 16 years old had gone with a male friend to the residence, where Thompson supplied them with numerous drinks of alcohol. Thompson is accused of sexually assaulting the girl multiple times, first on a couch and then in a bedroom. Thompson is also accused of choking and slapping the girl.
The girl and her male friend eventually were able to escape the house through a window in another bedroom, the affidavit said.
During questioning, Thompson admitted supplying the two minors with alcohol, but he told investigators at the time he could not remember anything else that might have happened because he was too intoxicated, the affidavit said.
Thompson has been charged with five Level 3 felony counts of rape, five Level 4 felony counts of sexual misconduct with a minor, a Class A misdemeanor charge of battery, and two Class B misdemeanor charges of furnishing alcohol to a minor. The most serious charges against Thompson are punishable by up to 16 years in prison.
The jury was in the process of being selected first thing Jan. 10 with the hopes of the trial officially getting started with opening arguments later that afternoon. The courtroom took a lunch break around 1 p.m. When the jury pool returned, state officials made mention of the error and made a motion to continue the case to which the judge agreed upon.
“To not be able to have this case heard this week and have the victim get justice is truly heartbreaking,” Herring said.
