Indiana’s chief justice and the most senior jurist on the Indiana Supreme Court published a sharp dissent Tuesday from a 3-2 ruling that could pave the way for defendants to be sentenced via video. Chief Justice Loretta Rush and Justice Steven David argued in the minority that defendants have a constitutional right to be physically present when a judge imposes a sentence for a crime.
A Massachusetts woman who sent her suicidal boyfriend a barrage of text messages urging him to kill himself was jailed Monday on an involuntary manslaughter conviction nearly five years after he died in a truck filled with toxic gas.
A northern Indiana man has pleaded guilty in a third county to having sex with women and not telling them he was HIV-positive. Travis Spoor, 39, of Silver Lake, pleaded guilty Monday in St. Joseph County to malicious mischief.
A man has been sentenced to 25 years in prison in the shaking death of his 2-month-old daughter in northeastern Indiana. Kevin N. Tucker was given his punishment Monday after pleading guilty in January to aggravated battery resulting in death.
The Indiana Court of Appeals has ruled that a judge exceeded his authority by doubling a woman’s prison sentence to six years after she failed to timely surrender to authorities to start her term.
The founder of a drug recovery home for women in southern Indiana has been released from prison just weeks after the state’s high court revised her original 30-year drug-related sentence. Lisa Livingston was released Wednesday from Rockville Correctional Facility after serving nine months.
Indiana Supreme Court Justices heard oral argument in two cases Thursday, beginning with a man who argued there was insufficient evidence to sustain his triple-murder conviction and that certain evidence was improperly admitted.
An Indianapolis man who was arrested in Texas after fleeing charges in a double-killing has been sentenced to 110 years in prison.
A woman who has yet to receive court-ordered substance abuse treatment may soon receive it after the Indiana Supreme Court granted transfer to her case.
A man’s argument that the execution of a suspended sentence for a crime he committed while on probation was an unduly harsh sanction failed before the Indiana Court of Appeals.
Finding the circumstances of an Orange County case to be “exceptional,” a majority of the Indiana Supreme Court has reduced a woman’s sentence and ordered that she be removed from the Department of Correction and instead placed in community corrections. A dissenting justice would have denied transfer of the case.
A man arrested for drug-related charges who later received additional charges under a separate cause failed to convince an Indiana Court of Appeals panel that a trial court abused its discretion by ordering his second sentence to be served consecutively to the first.
In an opinion interpreting a sentence modification statute, a divided panel of Indiana Court of Appeals ruled that a trial court lacked authority to modify a sentence that was entered pursuant to a fixed plea agreement. The majority’s ruling contrasts with the panel’s earlier decision in the same case, which was revisited on remand from the Indiana Supreme Court after a legislative amendment last year.
Two cases from Indiana, including the controversial fetal remains disposal law, will be on the agenda when the justices of the U.S. Supreme Court meet for their next conference on Jan. 4, 2019.
An Indiana man has been sentenced to 80 years in prison for the 1988 abduction, rape and killing of an 8-year-old girl. An Allen County judge sentenced 59-year-old John D. Miller, of Grabill, on Friday after Miller pleaded guilty to murder and child molestation charges in April Tinsley’s long-unsolved killing.
Federal prosecutors concede there wasn’t enough evidence to convict former Lake County Sheriff John Buncich on three of the five wire fraud counts he was found guilty of and he should be resentenced. Prosecutors say they failed to introduce sufficient evidence of “Federal reserve payroll fund” transfers alleged in three counts of the indictment against Buncich and “the Court should vacate Buncich’s convictions on those counts.”
Indiana Supreme Court Justices granted transfer in two cases last week concerning a father convicted of killing his infant daughter with a pillow and a piecemeal child in need of services adjudication.
A federal judge who described himself as disgusted by Michael Flynn’s behavior upended a straightforward sentencing hearing Tuesday, postponing punishment for President Donald Trump’s first national security adviser and telling him in a stinging rebuke, “Arguably you sold your country out.”
The Senate passed a sweeping criminal justice bill Tuesday that addresses concerns that the nation’s war on drugs had led to the imprisonment of too many Americans for nonviolent crimes without adequately preparing them for their return to society.
A northern Indiana lawyer could be sentenced to nearly two years in jail after she pleaded guilty Tuesday to forging a judge’s name on a phony divorce decree and sending a bogus email bearing a deputy prosecutor’s name. Jill N. Holtzclaw of Decatur pleaded guilty to Level 6 felony counts of forgery and counterfeiting Tuesday in Adams Superior Court.