## Facts

- James Conner sold a substance he represented as marijuana to a police informant.
- The material weighed more than 140 grams and Conner sold it for about $1,600.
- Laboratory testing showed the substance was not marijuana and contained no controlled substance.
- Conner was charged with distributing a noncontrolled substance that was misrepresented as a controlled substance, a felony carrying a maximum sentence of eight years’ imprisonment.
- A comparable sale of the same quantity of actual marijuana would have been punished less severely under Indiana’s controlled-substance statutes, with a maximum sentence of three years’ imprisonment.
- Conner was convicted and sentenced to six years in prison.
- Conner appealed to the Indiana Supreme Court, arguing that the sentencing disparity violated the Indiana Constitution’s proportionality requirement.

## Issues

1. Whether a six-year sentence for distributing a noncontrolled substance misrepresented as marijuana violates Article I, § 16 of the Indiana Constitution (“all penalties shall be proportioned to the nature of the offense”) when distribution of the same amount of real marijuana carries a lower maximum penalty.

## Decision

- The Indiana Supreme Court held that applying the higher-penalty “look-alike” statute to Conner’s conduct, resulting in a six-year sentence, violated Article I, § 16’s proportionality requirement.
- The court determined that punishing the sale of fake marijuana more harshly than the sale of the same amount of real marijuana was not proportioned to the nature of the offense.
- The court set aside the disproportionate sentencing result and ordered relief consistent with the constitutional proportionality requirement.

## Legal Principles

- Article I, § 16 of the Indiana Constitution requires that criminal penalties be proportioned to the nature of the offense.
- Although the legislature has broad authority to define crimes and set penalties, that authority is limited by the state constitution’s proportionality command.
- A penalty scheme may violate proportionality when it authorizes greater punishment for conduct that is, by its nature, no more harmful than (and may be less harmful than) closely comparable conduct receiving a lower penalty within the same statutory framework.
- When assessing proportionality under Article I, § 16, Indiana courts may compare the challenged penalty to penalties assigned to closely related offenses to evaluate whether the relative punishment matches the relative seriousness of the conduct.

## Conclusion

In *Conner v. Indiana*, the Indiana Supreme Court concluded that Conner’s six-year sentence for selling fake marijuana under the look-alike-substance statute was disproportionate under Article I, § 16 because Indiana law exposed him to substantially less punishment had he sold the same amount of actual marijuana; the court therefore granted relief from the constitutionally excessive sentencing outcome.


Conner v. Indiana, 626 N.E.2d 803 (1993)