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Former Indiana Attorney General Curtis Hill is set to stand trial before a jury next week, following two years of delays — and nearly seven years since Hill allegedly groped a lawmaker and three staffers during a party.
At a final pre-trial conference Tuesday, counsel representing the four plaintiffs asked Marion Superior Court Judge Patrick Dietrick to delay proceedings. The judge declined.
Instead, Dietrick gave preliminary instructions. He led both sides’ lawyers through the upcoming jury selection process, detailed his approach to direct examination and outlined a rough schedule for the five-day civil battery trial.
It’s set to run Monday through Friday. Dietrick said he hoped to have the jury seated by lunchtime Monday so that counsel could give opening statements that afternoon.
Plaintiffs Niki DaSilva, Samantha Lozano, Gabrielle McLemore and former Rep. Maria Candelaria Reardon accused then-Attorney General Hill of unwanted touching during a bar gathering celebrating the legislative session’s end in the early hours of March 15, 2018.
He has consistently denied the allegations, calling them “false” and “vicious.”
A special prosecutor was assigned to the case and chose not to bring criminal charges. But the Indiana Supreme Court found in 2020, after a disciplinary commission complaint, that Hill had committed criminal battery. It suspended his law license for 30 days.
The four plaintiffs originally filed suit in the U.S. District Court for Southern District in 2019, but the court dismissed it in 2020. They re-filed in state court that year.
That’s also the year Hill sought reelection to his post, losing to current Attorney General Todd Rokita at the Indiana Republican Party’s convention.
Hill launched a gubernatorial bid last year, in an attempted political comeback. But he came in sixth — last — according to the state’s primary election records.
Amid the jockeying for the Republican nomination, Hill was still fighting the case.
He was scheduled to go on trial the month before the primary election, but Dietrick vacated jury proceedings five days ahead of time. The trial was delayed several times in the two years prior.
The Indiana Capital Chronicle is an independent, not-for-profit news organization that covers state government, policy and elections.
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