Last month, Indiana ended its 15-year pause on the execution of inmates sentenced to death. However, legislation already has been filed in the Indiana General Assembly that would repeal the state’s death penalty.
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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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The Indiana Attorney General’s Office requested an execution date on Friday for death row inmate Roy Lee Ward, the Spencer County man convicted in 2007 for the rape and murder of 15‑year‑old Stacy Payne.
Four doses of execution drugs were purchased — some which were used while others expired.
Indiana has exhausted its supply of lethal injection drugs after carrying out two executions in the past six months — and Gov. Mike Braun said Tuesday he doesn’t plan to buy more, at least for now.
Questions remain about Benjamin Ritchie’s early Tuesday execution after his attorneys reported seeing sudden, unexpected movement during the lethal injection process.
Death row inmate Benjamin Ritchie was executed by lethal injection shortly after midnight Tuesday at the Indiana State Prison in Michigan City, according to Department of Correction officials.
Nearly 25 years after the killing, the state is hours away from carrying out Benjamin Ritchie’s death sentence. He’s scheduled to be executed by lethal injection just after midnight Tuesday.
Gov. Mike Braun announced his decision Wednesday afternoon, saying that he decided to let Ritchie’s execution “proceed as planned” on May 20.
The Indiana Parole Board rejected a clemency plea from Benjamin Ritchie, recommending that Gov. Mike Braun allow the death row inmate’s May 20 execution to proceed as scheduled.
Whether death row inmate Benjamin Ritchie will be executed on May 20 is now up to the state parole board and Gov. Mike Braun.
The high court requests are in response to a 2-2 decision handed down late last month by Indiana’s Supreme Court justices, which shut the door on any further legal challenges in state or federal courts.
Indiana is one of only two states with a death penalty law that doesn’t provide for media witnesses.
Indiana death row inmate Benjamin Ritchie expressed remorse and shed tears as he pleaded Monday for the state’s parole board to spare his life.
The Indiana Supreme Court has ordered the state to submit motions in response to death row inmate Benjamin Ritchie’s counsel, who requested a stay and oral arguments last week.
A divided Indiana Supreme Court denied condemned murderer Benjamin Ritchie’s request to seek post-conviction relief.
The justices found that Glossip’s trial violated his constitutional rights because prosecutors did not turn over evidence that might have bolstered his defense.
A Republican legislator made a public plea Monday for his bill to abolish Indiana’s death penalty, arguing that the state’s execution process was flawed and didn’t serve as a deterrent for “heinous crimes.”
A press freedom group representing the Indiana Capital Chronicle has filed a lawsuit in Marion Superior Court alleging the Indiana Department of Correction violated public records law by declining to reveal the cost of the lethal injection drug used in Joseph Corcoran’s December execution.
The secrecy surrounding the return of death penalty executions in Indiana isn’t exactly doing much to bolster public confidence in what some consider to be an inhumane act.
President Joe Biden announced on Monday that he is commuting the sentences of 37 of the 40 people on federal death row, converting their punishments to life imprisonment just weeks before President-elect Donald Trump, an outspoken proponent of expanding capital punishment, takes office.
Convicted murderer Joseph Corcoran was pronounced dead by lethal injection at 12:44 a.m. Wednesday morning, marking the first Indiana execution since 2009.