In the winter of 2021, two death row prisoners raised claims in habeas corpus proceedings that their trial attorneys were constitutionally ineffective. But the nation’s highest court split in a decision last month ruling that they could not introduce evidence outside of the state court record due to restrictions imposed by a federal law.
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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 MoreThe U.S. Supreme Court ruled along ideological lines Monday against two Arizona death row inmates who had argued that their lawyers did a poor job representing them in state court. The ruling will make it harder for certain inmates sentenced to death or long terms in prison who believe their lawyers failed them to bring challenges on those grounds.
The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday agreed to hear an appeal from Texas death row inmate Rodney Reed, who claims untested crime-scene evidence will help clear him.
Jury selection in the deadliest U.S. mass shooting ever to go to trial began Monday with preliminary screening for the panel that will determine whether Nikolas Cruz will be put to death for murdering 17 students and staff members at a Parkland, Florida, high school.
The Supreme Court said Thursday that states must accommodate the wishes of death row inmates who want to have their pastors pray aloud and even touch them during their executions.
South Carolina has given the green light to firing-squad executions, a method codified into state law last year after a decadelong pause in carrying out death sentences because of the state’s inability to procure lethal injection drugs.
The Supreme Court has reinstated the death sentence for Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.
A Gary man sentenced to death did not “properly file” a post-conviction petition in 2016, and an Indiana Supreme Court order in 2017 to file the deficient PCR petition did not render it proper, the Supreme Court has ruled in response to certified questions from a federal judge.
A federal grand jury indicted an Indiana man Wednesday on charges that would make him eligible for the death penalty if he’s convicted in the fatal shooting of a Terre Haute police detective and FBI task force officer.
States and the federal government carried out 11 executions this year, the fewest since 1988, as support for the death penalty has continued to decline.
The Indianapolis man accused of killing a Southport police officer is no longer facing the death penalty after the Marion Superior Court accepted an agreement Friday reached by defense attorneys and the Marion County Prosecutor’s Office, which dropped the potential for capital punishment in exchange for a bench trial that could result in the defendant being sentenced to life in prison.
Conservative Supreme Court justices expressed skepticism Tuesday about a Texas death row inmate’s demand that his pastor be allowed to pray out loud and touch him during his execution.
Oklahoma administered the death penalty Thursday on a man who convulsed and vomited as he was executed for the 1998 slaying of a prison cafeteria worker, ending a six-year execution moratorium brought on by concerns over its execution methods.
An Alabama man who avoided execution in February was put to death Thursday after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected a request for a stay by his lawyers, who had argued the execution should be blocked on grounds that he had an intellectual disability.
Nikolas Cruz pleaded guilty Wednesday to murdering 17 people during a rampage at his former high school in Parkland, Florida, leaving a jury to decide whether he will be executed for one of the nation’s deadliest school shootings.
The gunman who killed 14 students and three staff members at a Parkland, Florida, high school will plead guilty to their murders, his attorneys said Friday, bringing some closure to a South Florida community more than three years after an attack that sparked a nationwide movement for gun control.
A last-minute court hearing is set Friday in Florida for Nikolas Cruz, the man police said has confessed to the 2018 massacre of 17 people at a suburban high school.
Dylann Roof’s chances for a new appellate hearing continue to dwindle, with a court refusing to reconsider recusing itself from his appeal over his death sentence and conviction in the 2015 racist slayings of nine members of a Black South Carolina congregation.
The Supreme Court sounded ready Wednesday to reinstate the death penalty for convicted Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.
Dylann Roof has lost the next phase of his appeal, with a federal court turning down his request for a new hearing to challenge his death sentence and conviction in the 2015 racist slayings of nine members of a Black South Carolina congregation.
Dylann 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.