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The Indiana Supreme Court will hear an appeal Thursday from a man sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for his role in the murder of another man in 2018.
Oral arguments will be held in the supreme court courthouse, beginning at 9 a.m., for Michael Carr v. State of Indiana.
According to court records, in May 2023, a jury convicted Michael Carr of murdering Jason Lewis in Aug. 2018.
The state sought a sentence for life without parole in Carr’s case, highlighting the qualifying aggravating factors of 1) lying in wait and 2) being on parole when the murder took place.
The jury recommended the life without parole sentence and the Wayne Superior Court sentenced Carr accordingly.
Now, Carr is directly appealing to the Indiana Supreme Court under Appellate Rule 4(A)(1), arguing that his right to an impartial jury was violated, that the trial court deprived Carr of his right to confront and cross-examine witnesses, and that the trial court failed to provide the jury with proper Article 1 Section 19 instruction during final jury instructions.
The case is Michael Carr v. State of Indiana, 23S-LW-00139.
At 10 a.m., the state’s high court will also hear arguments in Ricky L. Taylor v. State of Indiana, in which appellant Ricky Taylor was sentenced to 41 years for allegedly selling illegal substances to a middleman, who then dealt substances that resulted in the deaths of two people.
During Taylor’s trial in Delaware Circuit Court, a detective testified that the middleman, who declined to testify at trial, identified Taylor as the person who sold him the substances. Taylor objected to the testimony, but the trial court ultimately convicted him of the crime.
Taylor appealed to the Indiana Court of Appeals, arguing that the trial court abused its discretion by admitting the detective’s testimony on the basis that it violated his constitutional right to confront witnesses against him.
The state agreed that the testimony shouldn’t have been admitted, but that Taylor’s conviction should be upheld because the evidence was cumulative of other unchallenged evidence, therefore its admission was harmless.
The Court of Appeals upheld the trial court’s conviction, agreeing that while the challenged testimony shouldn’t have been admitted, its admission was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt.
Taylor has now petitioned the state’s high court to accept jurisdiction over his appeal.
The case is Ricky L. Taylor v. State of Indiana, 24A-CR-02107.
Oral arguments can be viewed online.
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