A former pastor serving a prison sentence for contributing to the delinquency of a minor is asking a judge to have personal property returned to him.
Justin K. White, 39, former senior pastor of First Christian Church in Columbus, has filed a motion in Bartholomew Circuit Court seeking return of electronics that were seized when he was arrested at his Columbus home March 24, 2016 on charges of felony insurance fraud and felony contributing to the delinquency of a minor.
White is asking for the return of an Apple iPhone 6, an HP laptop, a Kindle Fire and a Dell laptop, which were taken when he was searched, along with his home and place of business, as part of the investigation.
Bartholomew Circuit Court Judge Kelly Benjamin has set a hearing for 2 p.m. Oct. 25 to consider White’s request.
White agreed to a plea bargain in the case and pleaded guilty to two Class C felony counts of contributing to the delinquency of a minor on Aug. 28, 2017. A Level 5 felony charge of insurance fraud was dropped as part of the plea bargain.
On Oct. 20, 2017, Benjamin sentenced White to three years in prison on the first felony count and gave him a four-year suspended sentence on the second, to be served consecutively. White was fined $1,795 in court costs and fees as part of the sentence.
The judge also ordered that White is not to have unsupervised contact with juveniles and is not to do any counseling of juveniles while incarcerated or on probation.
In his motion, filed by attorney Brian J. Johnson of Danville, White states the cell phone, Kindle and laptops do not constitute contraband and may be lawfully possessed by him.
White was accused of staging a burglary at his home on Dec. 18, 2016 to obtain insurance money to pay a drug debt, according to court documents. White had told the media and investigators that his family had returned home from church to find $11,000 in valuables missing, including his wife’s jewelry and a television.
The charges of contributing to the delinquency of a minor relate to accusations that White sought to have a juvenile commit an act that would be a felony if committed by an adult, court records state.
The probable-cause affidavit in White’s case states he overdosed on heroin on July 27, 2015 and was revived by naloxone, a drug-overdose antidote. After returning from an addiction treatment center in Minnesota, he resumed his senior minister role under requirements that included counseling, random drug testing and monitoring by elders, according to the affidavit.
White resigned as pastor on March 12, 2016, and he was arrested on March 24, 2016 when investigators accused him of arranging with a juvenile, who White had been counseling, to stage the burglary to pay a drug debt owed to the juvenile. The juvenile, who was 16 when White began counseling him, was asked by White to obtain marijuana, prescription pills and heroin for him, according to court documents.
The former pastor has been incarcerated at the Putnamville Correctional Facility since November 2017. His earliest release date is listed as March 19, 2019, based on Indiana’s good-time law which allows offenders to receive one day off their sentence for every day served in an Indiana correctional facility.
