COVID may have seemed like the only thing that happened in 2020, but for Indiana’s legal community, the past year brought watershed developments that will be with us for years to come, many of which were touched directly by the pandemic. Here are the Top 10 non-coronavirus Indiana legal news stories as determined by consensus of the Indiana Lawyer editorial staff.
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Attorney Ashley Eve was one of more than a dozen death penalty protesters who claimed that their First Amendment rights were violated when Indiana State Police set up roadblocks that kept capital punishment protestors almost 2 miles away from the federal prison in Terre Haute while three executions took place there last month. Eve was motivated to a career in law by her opposition to the death penalty.
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With federal death row in its jurisdiction, the Southern Indiana District Court is preparing but does not know what to expect as the U.S. Department of Justice moves forward with the resumption of executions after nearly two decades.
Read MoreDylann Roof has filed the next step in his federal appeal, challenging a court’s confirmation of his conviction and death sentence for the 2015 racist slayings of nine members of a Black South Carolina congregation.
A federal appeals court Wednesday upheld Dylann Roof’s conviction and death sentence for the 2015 racist slayings of nine members of a Black South Carolina congregation, saying the legal record cannot even capture the “full horror” of what he did.
A man suspected of fatally shooting a woman and her granddaughter outside a central Indiana automotive seating plant where all three worked was formally charged with murder Friday, and prosecutors plan to seek the death penalty if he’s convicted.
A lawsuit that sought information about the drugs Indiana plans to use in lethal injections and that motivated the Legislature to use a late-night session to keep the veil of secrecy intact has come to a close, with the state paying more than $800,000 in legal fees and disclosing that its supply of lethal injection drugs has long been expired.
An incarcerated man waiting on federal death row has for the third time unsuccessfully sought relief from his capital punishment, the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled. This time, it rejected his argument under the “savings clause” that recent changes in clinical diagnostic standards show that he is intellectually disabled and ineligible for the death penalty.
The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled against an Alabama inmate whose lawyers argued that his trial counsel should have done more to try to show he is intellectually disabled and therefore he should be spared a death sentence.
The Justice Department is halting federal executions after a historic use of capital punishment by the Trump administration, which carried out 13 executions in six months.
The Indiana Supreme Court has denied a final request for relief sought by a man facing the death penalty for the murder of his wife and stepchildren nearly 15 years ago.
The U.S. Supreme Court has refused to hear an appeal from a Virginia drug dealer who is serving a 41-year murder sentence that he claims is the result of vindictive prosecution.
Activists widely expected Joe Biden to take swift action against the death penalty as the first sitting president to oppose capital punishment, especially since an unprecedented spate of executions by his predecessor ended just days before Biden took office.
Joe Biden’s administration is urging the U.S. Supreme Court to reinstate the death sentence for Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev despite the president’s vocal opposition to capital punishment.
The 7th Circuit Court of Appeals on Tuesday affirmed the dismissal of a convicted killer’s habeas petition alleging ineffective assistance of counsel, agreeing that his attorney’s alleged errors did not prejudice him.
The Supreme Court on Monday refused to hear an appeal from a Missouri death row inmate who is seeking execution by firing squad.
The man on federal death row for the racist slayings of nine members of a Black South Carolina congregation is making his appellate argument that his conviction and death sentence should be overturned.
A Boone County murder defendant convicted and sentenced to life without parole failed to convince a majority of the Indiana Supreme Court that the trial court improperly denied his request to proceed pro se. The majority provided an analysis for considering pro se requests in capital and LWOP sentences, but minority justices raised concerns about the majority “till(ing) new constitutional soil.”
An appeals court has overturned the sentence of Texas’ longest serving death row inmate whose attorneys say has languished in prison for more than 45 years because he’s too mentally ill to be executed.
Ramsey Clark, the attorney general in the Johnson administration who became an outspoken activist for unpopular causes and a harsh critic of U.S. policy, has died. He was 93.
A convicted serial killer whose victims included two young boys died Sunday at a hospital in Indiana, authorities said.
The United States Supreme Court said Monday it will consider reinstating the death sentence for Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, presenting President Joe Biden with an early test of his opposition to capital punishment.
On federal death row in Terre Haute, prisoners fling notes on a string under each other’s cell doors and converse through interconnected air ducts. A top issue these days: whether President Joe Biden will halt executions, several told The Associated Press.