The announcement that Terry Curry was stepping down to tend to his health was followed by another surprise from the Marion County Prosecutor's Office: the end of low-level marijuana prosecutions in Indianapolis. Meanwhile, counties statewide also are gearing up for big changes beginning next year, when new rules governing pretrial release in criminal cases take effect.

The Taft Stettinius & Hollister merger with a big Minneapolis firm is the latest and largest in a flurry of deals involving Hoosier law firms. A Clark Circuit judge will serve no jail time and receive no probation for his misdemeanor plea in a confrontation in which he and a colleague were shot, but the Commission on Judicial Qualifications continues to investigate the shooting. And a harassment guilty plea in a case involving a Facebook post was affirmed by the Court of Appeals, but a dissenting judge wrote that the harassment statute itself should be thrown out.

Indiana Lawyer staff members each spent a day in a rural county, returning with photos and stories of small town law. Chief Justice Loretta Rush recently was affirmed to a second term, wherein she expects to build on initiatives from her first five years. And under direction from the General Assembly, Indiana water resources are getting a thorough assessment.

Law schools are tweaking and innovating their admissions processes as the number of first-year students rebounds. Changes in law enforcement staffing and technology are among the factors accounting for a reduction in wiretaps. And a collaboration between a major law firm and the Indiana Coalition Against Domestic Violence is giving survivors rare pro bono representation at the appellate level.  

The announcement that the Trump administration will resume federal executions at the U.S. Penitentiary in Terre Haute is causing uncertainty in the Southern District with the first planned lethal injection just four months away. Rare good news for civil legal aid funding: Increased interest rates led to a rebound in IOLTA revenue. And a new law will give some offenders the option of offsetting their court fees by performing extra community service.

Johnson County has an interim prosecutor now that Brad Cooper has been sentenced after pleading guilty to felony counts in a domestic violence case. A circuit court's ruling for a student who sued Purdue University after he was expelled for an alleged sexual assault is the first in a flood of similar cases nationwide. And while some in the judiciary have called for abolishing city and town courts, the venues also have their defenders.

After a Clark Circuit judge was among those charged with a felony for his involvement in a fight in which he and another judge were shot and wounded, details about what happened in the early morning hours of May 1 began to emerge. The latest public-interest lawsuit against the Indiana Department of Child Services alleges the agency is failing to protect children and inflicting further harm. In what has become a near-annual ritual recently, a federal judge blocked Indiana's latest attempt to restrict access to abortion.