A man’s burglary conviction has been reduced from a Level 1 felony after he broke into an elderly couple’s Franklin home and bound them at gunpoint before stealing weapons, money and their car. An appellate panel concluded that injury to the elderly man’s mind did not qualify as a bodily injury.
An Arkansas man sentenced to death for murdering a teenage girl in Texas 25 years ago has been granted his petition for habeas corpus after a federal judge determined him to be ineligible for the death penalty due to his intellectual disability. The man will be resentenced in Texas.
An appellate panel considered Wednesday whether a healthcare facility employee’s act of kicking a resident, resulting in his death, could be shielded from liability under the Indiana Medical Malpractice Act.
A judge in Jeffersonville has ruled a man accused of killing his ex-girlfriend and eating parts of her body can reject an insanity defense.
Saying it was “troubled” by how the Department of Child Services chose to litigate two nearly back-to-back child welfare cases, the Indiana Court of Appeals has ordered a trial court to re-evaluate a 2018 CHINS petition without relying on facts that were available for litigation during a 2017 CHINS proceeding.
Indiana is considered a leader in the red flag law movement that allows firearms to be confiscated from people deemed dangerous. But with language that some experts considered overly broad and potentially unconstitutional, the Indiana General Assembly revisited that legislation, known as the Jake Laird Law, during the 2019 legislative session.
While Indiana justices recently stressed the great public importance of proper adjudication of soaring mental health filings, states across the country are dealing with rising caseloads in no uniform way.
A federal judge has ruled in favor of several parties, including a Hendricks County sheriff’s deputy, after a mentally ill man was fatally shot during a welfare check.
A divided Indiana Court of Appeals panel cut a child molester’s sentence in half after it concluded that the length of his sentence was inappropriate due to his dementia and incompetence, among other things.
A woman with a history of mental illness who was convicted in 2002 of murdering her boyfriend after testifying the she heard a voice telling her she was the Messiah has won her federal habeas case asserting ineffective assistance of counsel. She will be freed unless the state opts within 120 days to retry her.
A man accused of fatally strangling an elderly woman and her daughter in northwestern Indiana has been ordered to get another mental health evaluation.
A man who set two Indiana covered bridges ablaze and almost burned down a third lost his insanity defense appeal after the Indiana Court of Appeals concluded he was legally sane at the time of the crimes.
A federal agency has awarded Indiana $1.2 million to further the state’s efforts to fight the opioid epidemic in rural areas.
While acknowledging Indiana’s efforts to reform its criminal justice system has slowed the growth of the state’s prison population, a new report by the ACLU of Indiana asserts that additional reforms, including expanded access to treatment for mental health and substance abuse, could reduce the number of incarcerated by 50 percent and save Hoosier taxpayers more than $541 million by 2025.
Indiana Supreme Court justices split over whether to grant transfer in two civil commitment order cases last week but granted transfer in two similar cases in a per curiam opinion that disapproved of a Marion County judge’s practice of permitting a presiding commissioner to sign the orders in his place.
The Indiana Supreme Court has expressly disapproved of a Marion County judge’s practice of summarily approving civil commitment orders individually reviewed by the presiding commissioner, though the justices also noted that the fact that the defendants' commitment orders have expired makes their appeals moot.
Mediators who work in restorative justice programs around Indiana say the program allows offenders and victims the chance to see each other as human, and perhaps increase accountability and understanding.
A western Indiana man has been sentenced to 30 years in prison after pleading guilty to fatally punching his wife.
A California federal appeals court ruling that homeless individuals cannot be criminally charged for sleeping on public property reflected sentiments last fall that helped stop a proposed Indianapolis ordinance that barred people from sitting or lying on public property during certain hours.
A firearms-related bill aiming to keep guns out of the hands of dangerous individuals received the go-ahead to advance in the statehouse Tuesday, taking one step closer to becoming law.