Last month, Indiana ended its 15-year pause on the execution of inmates sentenced to death. However, legislation already has been filed in the Indiana General Assembly that would repeal the state’s death penalty.
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In the winter of 2021, two death row prisoners raised claims in habeas corpus proceedings that their trial attorneys were constitutionally ineffective. But the nation’s highest court split in a decision last month ruling that they could not introduce evidence outside of the state court record due to restrictions imposed by a federal law.
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COVID may have seemed like the only thing that happened in 2020, but for Indiana’s legal community, the past year brought watershed developments that will be with us for years to come, many of which were touched directly by the pandemic. Here are the Top 10 non-coronavirus Indiana legal news stories as determined by consensus of the Indiana Lawyer editorial staff.
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Attorney Ashley Eve was one of more than a dozen death penalty protesters who claimed that their First Amendment rights were violated when Indiana State Police set up roadblocks that kept capital punishment protestors almost 2 miles away from the federal prison in Terre Haute while three executions took place there last month. Eve was motivated to a career in law by her opposition to the death penalty.
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A Republican legislator made a public plea Monday for his bill to abolish Indiana’s death penalty, arguing that the state’s execution process was flawed and didn’t serve as a deterrent for “heinous crimes.”
A press freedom group representing the Indiana Capital Chronicle has filed a lawsuit in Marion Superior Court alleging the Indiana Department of Correction violated public records law by declining to reveal the cost of the lethal injection drug used in Joseph Corcoran’s December execution.
The secrecy surrounding the return of death penalty executions in Indiana isn’t exactly doing much to bolster public confidence in what some consider to be an inhumane act.
President Joe Biden announced on Monday that he is commuting the sentences of 37 of the 40 people on federal death row, converting their punishments to life imprisonment just weeks before President-elect Donald Trump, an outspoken proponent of expanding capital punishment, takes office.
Convicted murderer Joseph Corcoran was pronounced dead by lethal injection at 12:44 a.m. Wednesday morning, marking the first Indiana execution since 2009.
The U.S. Court of Appeals late Monday denied a request to stay Indiana death row inmate Joseph Corcoran’s execution, which is scheduled to take place before sunrise Wednesday.
Joseph Corcoran’s legal team is asking a federal judge to step in and pause the execution to allow for a hearing and review of their claims that putting the inmate to death is unconstitutional.
The court’s ruling emphasized that concerns raised by defense counsel over Joseph Corcoran’s mental health have already “been thoroughly litigated in both state and federal courts.” Those prior court proceedings concluded that Corcoran was competent to waive his post-conviction options.
In new court documents, Joseph Corcoran’s legal team doubled down that the Indiana death row inmate’s “severe” mental illness has prevented him from properly requesting post-conviction relief.
About two weeks away from scheduled execution, Indiana death row inmate Joseph Corcoran’s last-ditch attempts to quash his capital punishment sentence are still up in the air.
Attorneys for convicted murderer Joseph Corcoran on Friday filed for a stay of execution, arguing it’s cruel and unusual punishment to execute someone who is seriously mentally ill.
The Indiana Department of Correction has refused to disclose how much the state paid to acquire a new execution drug, pentobarbital, that could be used to carry out at least one death warrant before the end of the year.
Counsel for Benjamin Ritchie, a man convicted in 2002 of murdering Beech Grove Police Officer William Toney, have until Nov. 1 to file a clemency request in response to the state’s motion to set an execution date, Indiana Supreme Court Chief Justice Loretta Rush wrote in an Oct. 3 order.
The Supreme Court is taking the bench again on Monday, ready to hear cases on ghost guns, a death sentence and transgender rights.
Larry Komp, lead attorney for death row inmate Joseph Corcoran’s legal team, told the Indiana Capital Chronicle his client is seeking a last plea with a clemency petition, however. Komp said he plans to visit with Corcoran — who’s currently being held at the Indiana State Prison— and file the necessary paperwork this week.
Experts say five executions being scheduled within one week is simply an anomaly that resulted from courts or elected officials in individual states setting dates around the same time after inmates exhausted their appeals.
The Indiana Supreme Court set the date for inmate Joseph E. Corcoran’s death Wednesday.
Williams, 55, is scheduled to be executed on Sept. 24 for the 1998 stabbing death of Lisha Gayle in the St. Louis suburb of University City. St. Louis County Circuit Judge Bruce Hilton on Wednesday will preside over an evidentiary hearing challenging Williams’ guilt. But the key piece of evidence to support Williams is DNA testing that is no longer viable.
A Florida man scheduled to be put to death on Thursday is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to delay his execution so that his challenge to Florida’s lethal injection procedures can be heard.
A Texas man described as intellectually disabled by his lawyers faced execution on Wednesday for strangling and trying to rape a woman who went jogging near her Houston home more than 27 years ago.