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After three executions in less than a year — ending a nearly 15-year pause in Indiana’s use of capital punishment — it’s not clear when the state will carry out another.
Five men remain on Indiana’s death row, but only four are currently considered competent for execution.
No new inmates have been added since 2013, and capital prosecutions remain rare and costly.
While prosecutors say there are still appropriate cases for capital punishment, local jurisdictions are increasingly weighing when those charges are best pursued compared to life-without-parole sentences, especially given the legal costs and the length of appeals.
“Prosecutors are using this only when absolutely necessary,” said Clark County Prosecutor Jeremy Mull. “Justice sometimes demands it — but it must also be reliable, fair and certain.”
There’s no timeline for the next execution — it’s up to the Indiana Attorney General’s Office to request execution dates from the state supreme court.
The future of execution methods is also unclear, given mounting scrutiny over how much Indiana taxpayers have paid for the lethal injection drug pentobarbital used in the state’s three most recent executions.
Who remains on Indiana’s death row
Indiana’s remaining condemned inmates are housed at the Indiana State Prison in Michigan City.
Eric D. Holmes was sentenced in 1993 for a double murder during a 1989 robbery at a Marion County Shoney’s restaurant. Holmes and an accomplice ambushed three former coworkers, killing two with knives. His federal habeas appeal was denied, and the U.S. Supreme Court declined to review his case.
Kevin Isom was sentenced in 2013 for killing his wife, Cassandra, and her two teenage children in Gary in 2007. He fired at responding officers before a SWAT team took him into custody. His case remains under federal habeas corpus review.
Jeffrey Weisheit was sentenced in 2013 for the deaths of two children in Vanderburgh County. Prosecutors said he bound and gagged 5-year-old Caleb and 8-year-old Alyssa Lynch before setting his home on fire. His most recent federal appeal was denied in 2023.
William Clyde Gibson III, sentenced in separate cases in 2013 and 2014 for killing three women — Karen Hodella, Stephanie Kirk and Christine Whitis — in Floyd County. Each was strangled to death in 2012. His appeals are ongoing in federal court.
Michael Dean Overstreet was sentenced in 2000 for the 1997 kidnapping, rape and murder of 18-year-old Kelly Eckart in Johnson County. He was declared mentally incompetent for execution in 2014, effectively suspending his death sentence unless a future court finds him competent.
Three others who were long listed on Indiana’s death row — Joseph Corcoran, Benjamin Ritchie and Roy Ward — have since been executed.
Corcoran was executed in December 2024 for the 1997 killings of four men in Fort Wayne — one brother and three friends — marking Indiana’s first execution since 2009.
Ritchie was executed in May for the 2000 shooting death of Beech Grove Police Officer William Toney.
And Ward was put to death earlier this month for the 2001 rape and murder of 15-year-old Stacy Payne in Spencer County, marking the state’s third execution in twelve months.
Pending capital cases
No new inmates have been added to Indiana’s death row since 2013. But several defendants across the state currently face capital murder charges.
According to data from the Indiana Supreme Court and county filings, four defendants have pending death penalty cases: John Adams in Marion County; Carl Boards II in Madison County; Orlando Mitchell in Marion County; and Dalonny Rodgers in Hendricks County.
County prosecutors have not filed any new death penalty cases in 2025, as of mid-October.
Over the past five years, filings have been limited to between one and three capital cases per year — a decline from the 1990s and early 2000s, when multiple capital prosecutions often ran simultaneously, according to state data.
Three new death penalty cases were filed in 2021, two in 2022, two in 2023 and one in 2024, Supreme Court data shows.
Prosecutors weigh costs, time and other factors
Mull chairs the Indiana Prosecuting Attorney Council’s Complex Litigation Committee that advises Hoosier prosecutors on capital cases, law enforcement shootings and other highly complicated cases. He told the Indiana Capital Chronicle that prosecutors reserve death penalty filings for “the worst of the worst offenders.”
“These cases are filed where we have very strong and incontrovertible proof of guilt,” Mull said. “We do not want to be a state where we have someone who is wrongfully put on death row.”
He noted that while justice sometimes requires pursuing the death penalty, prosecutors also weigh a defendant’s mental condition and the toll that lengthy appeals take on victims’ families.
“Many families simply don’t want to go through decades of appeals and hearings,” Mull said. “They want closure. Life without parole often accomplishes that.”
Costs of capital litigation are another consideration.
“These cases can run into the millions of dollars over time,” he said. “Counties generally get reimbursed for a percentage of that by the state, but it can still leave taxpayers locally on the hook for a huge amount of money.”
Death penalty prosecutions can cost counties millions to litigate, depending on how long the case remains active.
Multiple state studies — including a 2010 review by the nonpartisan Legislative Services Agency — have found that a death penalty case in Indiana costs about five times more than a comparable case seeking life without parole, largely because of the extra trials, legal motions, expert witnesses and appeals required.
The Indiana Abolition Coalition further points to counties that have been forced to raise taxes or divert road funds to cover the costs of single capital prosecutions that later resulted in life sentences instead.
Under Indiana law, counties can seek 50% reimbursement for defense costs in death penalty cases through the Indiana Commission on Court Appointed Attorneys.
Marion, Madison and Wayne counties collectively received more than $230,000 capital reimbursements during the 2024–25 fiscal year for ongoing cases, according to the CCAA’s latest annual report.
Statewide, capital reimbursements totaled about $197,000 in fiscal year 2022–23 and $312,000 in 2023–24, according to CCAA data.
Mull emphasized that the state’s appellate process can take decades, contributing to delays that frustrate families and communities. He suggested lawmakers consider legislation to shorten appellate timelines, arguing that “citizens and victims have a right to speedy justice,” just as defendants do.
“There’s no reason it should take 10 or 20 years to determine whether it was a fair trial,” he said.
Questions over Indiana’s execution drugs
The state resumed executions last year using pentobarbital, a single drug protocol also used by the federal government.
Gov. Mike Braun’s office has refused to disclose how much the state paid for the latest three sets of lethal injection drugs purchased by the Department of Correction in recent months.
At least one of those sets of pentobarbital was expected to be used for Ward’s execution. The remaining sets will expire at the end of the month, according to court documents.
The governor previously disclosed that state officials spent $1.175 million on lethal injection doses over the past year — $600,000 of which was spent by former Gov. Eric Holcomb’s administration on drugs that expired before use. The cost has been between $275,000 and $300,000 per dose.
Over the past year, Braun and several Republican lawmakers have discussed potential alternatives to lethal injection amid ongoing shortages and legal challenges.
Some have floated legislation to authorize nitrogen hypoxia, mirroring Alabama’s new method, while others have proposed a review of whether the state should keep the death penalty at all.
Bills to abolish capital punishment have been filed in recent sessions but have not received hearings.
Federal death row in Terre Haute
Indiana is also home to the nation’s only federal execution chamber, located in the U.S. Penitentiary in Terre Haute. The facility gained national attention during the final months of the first Trump administration, when officials carried out 13 executions there between 2020 and 2021.
Today, only three men remain on federal death row — two of them housed in Terre Haute. The third, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, convicted for his role in the Boston Marathon bombing, is being held in Colorado because of what Bureau of Prisons officials have described as “unique security management requirements.”
Federal executions have been paused since 2021, though, when former President Joe Biden ordered a moratorium to review the government’s use of pentobarbital. In December 2024, Biden commuted the death sentences of 37 of the 40 men who were then on federal death row, converting their punishments to life without parole.
He did not commute the sentences of Tsarnaev; Dylann Roof, who killed nine people in a Charleston church; and Robert Bowers, convicted in the 2018 Pittsburgh synagogue massacre.
Since returning to office, President Donald Trump has pledged to restart executions in Terre Haute and directed Justice Department officials to assist state prosecutors interested in re-trying Biden clemency recipients in states that retain the death penalty.
The Indiana Capital Chronicle is an independent, nonprofit news organization that covers state government, policy and elections.
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