In the middle of the General Assembly’s 2020 session, as youth advocates were fighting proposed legislation that would have allowed preteens to be charged as adults for certain crimes, the Commission on Improving the Status of Children in Indiana took a step toward comprehensive juvenile justice reform.
Anyone younger than 18 will need a judge’s permission to get married in Indiana under a law change approved by state legislators. The measure endorsed almost unanimously by lawmakers would repeal the state’s current law that allows those as young as 15 to marry if they have parental consent.
An Indianapolis teenager charged as an adult pleaded guilty Wednesday to two counts of murder in the August shooting deaths of two siblings.
A 16-year-old Indianapolis boy was charged Monday with murder as an adult for allegedly fatally shooting two teenage siblings.
Lee Boyd Malvo, the Washington, D.C., area sniper, and the state of Virginia agreed Monday to dismiss a pending Supreme Court case after the state changed criminal sentencing law for juveniles.
A bill increasing the penalties for juvenile offenders passed a Senate committee on the night of Jan. 28 despite more than an hour of testimony from judges, attorneys, social workers, pastors and former inmates who all voiced strong and sometimes emotional opposition.
A potential fight over whether to repeal Indiana’s obsolete ban on same-sex marriages has sidetracked a widely supported proposal to raise the state’s minimum age for getting married.
A homeschooled teen who threatened to shoot students at northern Indiana high school did not convince an Indiana Court of Appeals panel that there wasn’t enough evidence to support his delinquency adjudication.
A bill increasing the penalties for juvenile offenders passed a Senate committee Tuesday night despite more than an hour of testimony from judges, attorneys, social workers, pastors and former inmates who all voiced strong and sometimes emotional opposition.
A bill mandating tougher penalties for juvenile defendants, including allowing 12-year-olds to be waived to adult court for attempted murder, is scheduled to be heard in a legislative committee Tuesday, but already strong opposition is mounting with both state and national organizations warning of the consequences.
The Indiana Court of Appeals on Thursday reversed a 12-year-old boy’s delinquency adjudication for what would be Level 4 felony child molestation, finding he lacked maturity to knowingly and voluntarily waive his rights and that evidence of a police interrogation should not have been admitted.
An order that a juvenile delinquent be committed to the Indiana Department of Corrections until his 18th birthday has been remanded for correction after the Indiana Court of Appeals concluded the trial court abused its discretion in ordering the determinate commitment.
The Indiana Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges and the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges are now exempted sources of reimbursement under Code of Judicial Conduct Rules 3.14 and 3.15, the Indiana Supreme Court announced.
Indiana’s largest organization that advocates for the interests of child victims of abuse has received the largest donation in its history — a $5 million grant from the Lilly Endowment. “They call it a transformational gift, and it certainly is for us,” Child Advocates CEO Cindy Booth said of the award.
A young adult accused of child molesting when he was a teenager has had his granted motion to dismiss a delinquency petition against him reversed. The Indiana Court of Appeals found the juvenile court had subject matter jurisdiction in the case.
A 17-year-old boy who admitted in an Ohio court to making hoax phone calls to authorities in a half-dozen states, including Indiana, should receive a one-year sentence with credit for time served, a prosecutor said.
Indiana’s new state public defender was officially appointed Monday with an order from the Indiana Supreme Court. Amy E. Karozos will begin her four-year term as state public defender Jan. 13.
A juvenile dangerous possession of a firearm adjudication has been upheld by the Indiana Court of Appeals despite the finding that state statutes in play in his case are in conflict.
The Children’s Policy and Law Initiative of Indiana and more than 20 nonprofits and community groups have joined together to form the Indiana Coalition for Youth Justice, which advocates for reform in the juvenile justice system so that it offers treatment, programs and interventions that are age-appropriate, fairly applied and result in the best possible outcomes for Indiana children and public safety.
The sentencing fate of a man convicted as a teenager of murder is in the hands of the Indiana Supreme Court as the justices decide how they will rule in the case concerning a “de facto life sentence” for the teen.