Articles

Special prosecutor sought in attack after bus fatality sentence

A special prosecutor should be appointed to determine whether a northern Indiana woman will be charged in an attack on a woman who had just been sentenced in a crash that killed her three children at a school bus stop, county prosecutors said. Fulton County prosecutors asked a judge in a filing Thursday to appoint a special prosecutor, saying they cannot be unbiased in deciding whether Brittany Ingle should be charged in the Dec. 18 attack on Alyssa Shepherd.

Read More

Jeffersonville man incompetent again for trial in gruesome killing

A southern Indiana man accused of killing his ex-girlfriend and eating parts of her body has once again been found incompetent to stand trial in the 2014 slaying, months after his first trial ended in a mistrial. An agreement between Joseph Oberhansley’s defense attorneys and Clark County prosecutors stipulates that he is to be transported to a state hospital for competency restoration, based on two evaluations filed in December by psychiatrists.

Read More

New pretrial release rule adds risk assessments for booked inmates

A new Indiana rule requiring that booked inmates be assessed to determine risks or benefits of releasing them before trial is expected to eventually reduce overcrowding at the state’s county jails, criminal justice officials say. Criminal Rule 26, which set Indiana’s new pretrial release protocols, was adopted by the Indiana Supreme Court in 2017, but it didn’t take effect statewide until Jan. 1.

Read More

Former DCS worker seeking dismissal of criminal case

The former DCS worker facing criminal charges is scheduled to be in Madison Circuit Court Friday, arguing the indictment against him should be dismissed because not only are the allegations too vague to comply with state law and constitutional guarantees, but also because he is protected by immunity.

Read More

Prosecutors: Deeply-in-debt Michael Avenatti sought payday

Prosecutors say high-profile California attorney Michael Avenatti was over $15 million in debt when he tried to extort  up to $25 million from Nike, while Avenatti’s lawyers say the money he legally requested to conduct an internal probe of the sportswear giant was a bargain. Both sides made the assertions in court papers filed late Tuesday in advance of a Jan. 22 criminal trial in Manhattan.

Read More

Year in Review: Baer death penalty reversal most-read IL story of 2019

A federal appeals court’s reversal of Madison County killer Fredrick Baer’s death sentence was the most-read story on the Indiana Lawyer’s digital edition, www.theindianalawyer.com. Indiana Lawyer readers clicked on stories on our website more than 2.6 million times between Jan. 1 and Dec. 10, 2019, according to Google Analytics. Here are the 50 most-viewed story headlines during that time.

Read More