A hearing for a former pastor serving a prison sentence for contributing to the delinquency of a minor has been postponed until next month.
Justin K. White, 39, former senior pastor of First Christian Church in Columbus, will appear before Bartholomew Circuit Court Judge Kelly Benjamin at 2:45 p.m. Nov. 8 requesting the return of an Apple iPhone 6, an HP laptop, a Kindle Fire and a Dell laptop which were confiscated by police when White was arrested at his Columbus home March 24, 2016.
The former pastor was accused of felony insurance fraud and felony contributing to the delinquency of a minor in a case involving a burglary reported to have occurred at the White home, according to court records.
White was accused of staging the 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.
White 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 not have unsupervised contact with juveniles and 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 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.
