On the heels of criticism from a national organization and multiple lawsuits challenging Indiana’s public defender system, Indiana lawmakers and legal stakeholders are beginning to review the state’s public defense mechanisms to identify strategies for improvement.
As a statewide task force begins the process of analyzing deficiencies in Indiana’s indigent defense services, a group of Johnson County criminal defendants sought to keep alive a lawsuit against their court-appointed public defenders. The defendants Thursday urged the Indiana Court of Appeals to reinstate their suit alleging ineffective assistance of counsel before their cases have concluded.
Did the suspect ask for a lawyer dog? Or did he call a detective “dog,” while seeking a lawyer? A Louisiana Supreme Court justice appears to side with the canine lawyer interpretation.
The Supreme Court of the United States on Thursday ruled against a Boston man seeking to overturn his murder conviction because his lawyer failed to object when the trial judge closed the courtroom during jury selection.
A Warrick County man who claimed multiple constitutional violations prejudiced him at his trial for drug crimes failed to prove those violations, the Indiana Court of Appeals decided Thursday.
The 7th Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed a man’s firearms and fraud convictions Wednesday, rejecting each of the former counselor’s arguments against his attorney and the district court judge.
The report found Indiana is failing to equally provide constitutionally mandated effective counsel to indigent people accused of felony, misdemeanor and juvenile offenses.
Indiana is failing to equally provide constitutionally guaranteed effective counsel to indigent people accused of misdemeanor, felony and juvenile offenses, according to a report released Monday. In some counties, poor people facing criminal charges are encouraged to negotiate directly with prosecutors before being appointed counsel.
Nearly four years after he orchestrated an Indianapolis home explosion that killed two people, Mark Leonard is arguing that he should not have to spend the rest of his life in prison because his Sixth Amendment rights were violated.
Defense counsel for Mark Leonard, the man convicted of killing two people in a 2012 home explosion, argued before the Indiana Supreme Court Thursday that Leonard’s constitutional rights to an attorney were violated when an undercover officer posed as a hitman in prison and questioned Leonard, without his attorney present, about his plan to have a key witness killed.
The 7th Circuit Court of Appeals said a firearm discovered by police was not the product of an illegal seizure and affirmed the denial of a man’s motion to suppress it. The court also held the statement he gave to police did not violate his Sixth Amendment right to counsel.
The Indiana Supreme Court said admission of an autopsy report and testimony by a pathologist who did not complete the report was not a violation of a man’s Sixth Amendment right to cross-examination and thus affirmed the trial court’s conviction of second-degree murder.
While police officers who overheard a pretrial consultation between a suspect and his lawyer were definitely in the wrong, the total suppression of all the officers’ testimony in the case may not be necessary, the Indiana Supreme Court ruled in a unanimous decision
A defendant’s request to disqualify the entire LaPorte County Prosecutor’s Office from his voluntary manslaughter case because several in the office viewed his conversation with his attorney recorded during a police interrogation is moot because there is a new prosecutor in office, the Indiana Court of Appeals has ruled.
A 3-2 decision of the Indiana Supreme Court on Thursday reinstated a Class A felony child molestation conviction that the Court of Appeals reversed because the defendant was denied opportunities to admit evidence.
In a split decision, the Indiana Court of Appeals decided on interlocutory appeal that a trial court should not have issued a blanket exclusion order preventing all of the officers who eavesdropped on a defendant’s conversation with his attorney from testifying in any matter in the case.
A trial court committed fundamental error when it determined a man convicted by a jury of Class A misdemeanor battery committed a crime of domestic violence, the Indiana Court of Appeals held Thursday.
The belt used by a man to repeatedly strike his girlfriend qualifies as a deadly weapon and supports elevating his battery conviction to a Class C felony, the Indiana Court of Appeals held Friday.
The defendant in a drug trial was unable to convince the Indiana Court of Appeals that his constitutional right to confront a witness was violated when the confidential informant did not testify at trial.
In a matter of first impression, the Indiana Court of Appeals Friday concluded that a return of service on a protective order is not testimonial, so its admission at trial did not violate a defendant’s rights under the Confrontation Clause.