A mentally disabled man serving a 55-year prison sentence for an Elkhart murder 17 years ago that he maintains he did not commit is reviving his efforts for post-conviction relief, presenting new evidence in a petition he claims exonerates him.
Several new state laws take effect Monday, from a required high school state government test to allowing wrongfully incarcerated individuals to collect $50,000 a year.
The following enrolled acts, followed in parentheses by their corresponding public law numbers, take effect July 1 unless otherwise noted below.
Although the $34 billion budget dominated the session, legislators introduced and considered more than 600 bills each in both the Senate and the House. The ones they passed covered a variety of matters, including hate crimes, hemp, gambling, foster parents, electricity generation and, of course, electric scooters.
The science of DNA testing is evolving, and that’s a good thing for wrongful conviction reform advocates like Fran Watson. She talked about the changes Friday before a session of the Indiana State Bar Association Solo/Small Firm Conference in French Lick.
A bill that would offer wrongly convicted Hoosiers compensation for their vacated prison sentences has made steps towards finality in the Indiana Statehouse.
Legislation in the Indiana General Assembly Bill would compensate people who have been exonerated after a wrongful conviction, but only if they don’t sue the state.
Nearly 13 years after he was found guilty of a murder he claims he did not commit and following a subsequent series of failed attempts at appellate and post-conviction relief, a developmentally disabled man has petitioned the Elkhart Circuit Court to overturn his conviction on the basis of new evidence he says proves his confession was coerced and his counsel was ineffective. Andrew Royer filed a petition to vacate the judgment against him on Wednesday.
A northern Indiana city is maintaining the guilt of a Chicago man convicted in a 1996 shooting after the man filed a lawsuit following his pardon.
The 7th Circuit Court of Appeals declined to allow a plaintiff to seek money damages against an Elkhart County detective who incorrectly identified latent fingerprints as those of a woman convicted of murder in 2002. The panel ruled that despite his training, the detective was still considered an expert on fingerprint identification.
A New Jersey man who served 22 years behind bars before his murder conviction was overturned has been freed from prison.