The Republican-dominated Indiana Senate passed a stripped-down hate crimes bill Thursday and sent the measure to the House, where Republican Gov. Eric Holcomb and others hope the legislation can still be strengthened. The Senate voted 39-10 in favor of the legislation that was changed two days earlier to remove a list of specifically protected characteristics, including sexual orientation, gender identity and race.
After more than three hours of testimony and discussion on Monday morning, the Senate Public Policy Committee voted to send a bias crimes bill to the full Senate for consideration. Senate Bill 12 would give judges the ability to consider whether a crime was committed out of hate or bias toward specific groups of individuals as an aggravating circumstance at sentencing.
The Indiana Court of Appeals affirmed a man’s murder conviction and 65-year sentence after finding the defendant failed to show how out-of-court statements allegedly made by several individuals qualified as an exception to the hearsay rule.
The Indiana Court of Appeals affirmed a man’s sentence and convictions for child exploitation and possession of child pornography when it found the heinousness of his crimes warranted the sentence.
An Alexandria man who unsuccessfully moved for a mistrial and challenged evidence the state produced to convict him of child molesting failed to convince the Indiana Court of Appeals that the trial court had erred or that his 12-year executed sentence was inappropriate.
A federal judge on Wednesday sentenced former powerhouse Merrill Lynch broker Thomas Buck to three years and four months in prison.
Indiana’s chief justice and the most senior jurist on the Indiana Supreme Court published a sharp dissent Tuesday from a 3-2 ruling that could pave the way for defendants to be sentenced via video. Chief Justice Loretta Rush and Justice Steven David argued in the minority that defendants have a constitutional right to be physically present when a judge imposes a sentence for a crime.
A Massachusetts woman who sent her suicidal boyfriend a barrage of text messages urging him to kill himself was jailed Monday on an involuntary manslaughter conviction nearly five years after he died in a truck filled with toxic gas.
A northern Indiana man has pleaded guilty in a third county to having sex with women and not telling them he was HIV-positive. Travis Spoor, 39, of Silver Lake, pleaded guilty Monday in St. Joseph County to malicious mischief.
A man has been sentenced to 25 years in prison in the shaking death of his 2-month-old daughter in northeastern Indiana. Kevin N. Tucker was given his punishment Monday after pleading guilty in January to aggravated battery resulting in death.
The Indiana Court of Appeals has ruled that a judge exceeded his authority by doubling a woman’s prison sentence to six years after she failed to timely surrender to authorities to start her term.
The founder of a drug recovery home for women in southern Indiana has been released from prison just weeks after the state’s high court revised her original 30-year drug-related sentence. Lisa Livingston was released Wednesday from Rockville Correctional Facility after serving nine months.
Indiana Supreme Court Justices heard oral argument in two cases Thursday, beginning with a man who argued there was insufficient evidence to sustain his triple-murder conviction and that certain evidence was improperly admitted.
An Indianapolis man who was arrested in Texas after fleeing charges in a double-killing has been sentenced to 110 years in prison.
A woman who has yet to receive court-ordered substance abuse treatment may soon receive it after the Indiana Supreme Court granted transfer to her case.
A man’s argument that the execution of a suspended sentence for a crime he committed while on probation was an unduly harsh sanction failed before the Indiana Court of Appeals.
Finding the circumstances of an Orange County case to be “exceptional,” a majority of the Indiana Supreme Court has reduced a woman’s sentence and ordered that she be removed from the Department of Correction and instead placed in community corrections. A dissenting justice would have denied transfer of the case.
A man arrested for drug-related charges who later received additional charges under a separate cause failed to convince an Indiana Court of Appeals panel that a trial court abused its discretion by ordering his second sentence to be served consecutively to the first.
In an opinion interpreting a sentence modification statute, a divided panel of Indiana Court of Appeals ruled that a trial court lacked authority to modify a sentence that was entered pursuant to a fixed plea agreement. The majority’s ruling contrasts with the panel’s earlier decision in the same case, which was revisited on remand from the Indiana Supreme Court after a legislative amendment last year.
Two cases from Indiana, including the controversial fetal remains disposal law, will be on the agenda when the justices of the U.S. Supreme Court meet for their next conference on Jan. 4, 2019.