The Indiana Southern District Court determined there was an immediate need to delete Local Criminal Rule 6-1 – Petitions Under 28 U.S.C. Section 2254 or 2255 in Cases Involving a Sentence of Capital Punishment, according to a Monday notice. In response, the rule was replaced with the adoption of Local Criminal Rule 38-2 – Cases Challenging the Conviction and/or Sentence Where a Sentence of Death Has Been Imposed.
Jury selection began Monday in the trial of a southern Indiana man accused of killing his ex-girlfriend and eating parts of her body nearly five years ago. Prosecutors say Joseph Oberhansley, 38, broke into the Jeffersonville home of his 46-year-old ex-girlfriend, Tammy Jo Blanton, in September 2014, and then raped her, fatally stabbed her and ate parts of her body.
The Indiana Department of Correction has confirmed the state doesn’t have the necessary drugs to execute any of the eight men who are on death row.
A Southern District Court judge’s order that the federal government disclose personal information stemming from a triple murder it had previously refused to turn over has been reversed. The 7th Circuit Court of Appeals found that public interest does not support the information’s disclosure, simultaneously affirming that certain documents were protected by an exception of the Freedom of Information Act.
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.
The Indianapolis man facing a possible death penalty for allegedly killing a Southport police officer is scheduled to appear in court Friday with a new legal team, including the former dean of Valparaiso University Law School.
After the Justice Department announced Thursday that it will resume executing death row prisoners for the first time in nearly two decades, five inmates are facing potential execution dates at the high-security U.S. Penitentiary in Terre Haute.
The Justice Department said Thursday that it will carry out executions of federal death row inmates for the first time since 2003.
A man convicted of killing a central Indiana woman and her 4-year-old daughter faces resentencing next month after federal courts threw out his death sentence.
An Indiana death row inmate whose request for a new sentencing hearing split the Indiana Supreme Court and drew a 40-page dissent from Chief Justice Loretta Rush has failed to convince the U.S. Supreme Court to review his case.
An Arkansas man sentenced to death for murdering a teenage girl in Texas 25 years ago has been granted his petition for habeas corpus after a federal judge determined him to be ineligible for the death penalty due to his intellectual disability. The man will be resentenced in Texas.
The Indiana Department of Correction’s refusal to disclose to the public information concerning the means it would use to execute a condemned criminal will cost taxpayers more than a half-million dollars in attorney fees, a judge has ruled.
A man who was sentenced to life in prison without parole for fatally shooting a Gary police officer in 2014 has withdrawn his effort to challenge his conviction.
A man who was sentenced to life in prison without parole for fatally shooting a northwestern Indiana police officer in 2014 has withdrawn his effort to challenge his conviction. Carl Le’Ellis Blount filed a petition last year alleging Lake County prosecutors threatened him to get him to plead guilty to murder in the shooting death of Gary Patrolman Jeffrey Westerfield, but he asked to withdraw his petition in April.
Death row inmates Patrick Murphy and Domineque Ray each turned to courts recently with pleas to stop their executions if their desired spiritual advisers couldn't accompany them into the execution chamber. The Supreme Court allowed Ray’s execution to go forward, but gave Murphy a temporary reprieve Thursday night.
The Supreme Court was about to adjourn for the day when the Georgia baritone politely inquired of the lawyer at the lectern. Justice Clarence Thomas was breaking a three-year silence at high court arguments with a couple of questions in a case about racial discrimination in the South.
Curtis Flowers has been jailed in Mississippi for 22 years, even as prosecutors couldn’t get a murder conviction against him to stick through five trials. This week, the Supreme Court will consider whether his conviction and death sentence in a sixth trial should stand or be overturned for a familiar reason: because prosecutors improperly kept African-Americans off the jury.
Indianapolis attorneys had spent years — one nearly two decades — trying to secure justice for Domineque Ray, an inmate on Alabama’s death row. Their efforts were defeated Feb. 7, when Ray was executed before their eyes.
The 737 inmates on the nation’s largest death row got a reprieve from California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Wednesday when he signed an executive order placing a moratorium on executions.
The US Supreme Court is ordering a new state court hearing to determine whether an Alabama death row inmate is so affected by dementia that he can’t be executed.