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A Hendricks County judge has rescheduled a hearing originally set for Wednesday where Indiana Department of Child Services Director Eric Miller has been ordered to attend and explain why the department shouldn’t be held in contempt.
The hearing is now scheduled for 1 p.m. Sept. 25.
Hendricks Superior Court Judge Robert Freese ordered Miller to attend the hearing in person for a case related to a father who was sentenced to 70 years in prison for the torture death of his 4-year-old son.
DCS is a nonparty to the case — Estate of Judah Morgan, by Jenna Hullett, Personal Representative v. Alan Morgan, 32D01-2301-CT-000004 — but a plaintiff’s motion for rule to show cause says DCS placed the 4-year-old in the parents’ home and that the department has not been forthcoming with documents related to the child and parents.
In a brief supporting its motion to vacate the hearing, the Indiana Attorney General’s Office said DCS has not acted in bad faith or willfully violated court orders.
The state filed the motion Saturday.
Court documents show DCS filed a motion to quash the nonparty request and subpoena in March, which the court denied. The court ordered DCS to produce responsive documents by June 15, but the department requested and received an extension until July 15.
On July 14, DCS requested that a protective order be entered prior to production, which the court granted five days later.
DCS produced “a few documents” to the plaintiff on Aug. 11, the show-cause motion says, then asked the court for another extension to run past the statute of limitations. The court denied the motion for an extension of time.
Many of the documents DCS did produce were incomplete and had material redacted even though the court had already entered a protective order, according to the plaintiff’s motion.
But DCS has “worked diligently,” the state’s motion says, to produce more than 1,900 documents and 22,707 emails. The brief also says DCS inadvertently produced only the first page of some documents.
The state’s brief says DCS’s counsel did not consider the statute of limitations when filing the extension motion and that the statute of limitations is “irrelevant” to the case anyway because the protective order means documents produced couldn’t be used in another lawsuit.
The state’s motion also says it would be better to have Christine Macdonald, internal affairs officer at DCS, to testify rather than Miller because she was involved with production.
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to show the Hendricks Superior Court hearing involving the Indiana Department of Child Services has been rescheduled for Sept. 25.
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