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 MoreA former Indiana State University volleyball player who sued the university upon learning a campus locker room was being secretly filmed by a fellow student could not convince the Indiana Court of Appeals that granting ISU’s motion for summary judgment was a mistake.
An April police shooting in West Terre Haute that killed a western Indiana man who exchanged gunfire with officers was justified and the man’s actions amounted to “an ambush” on officers, a prosecutor said.
The deaths of Daniel Lewis Lee, Wesley Ira Purkey and Dustin Honken roused the anger of civil liberties lawyers, who say the executions were carried out in a rushed and even unlawful manner. The overarching question in public discussion has been “why” — why did Attorney General William Barr make the executions a priority? And why were they carried out while the country was dealing with a pandemic, racial unrest and a looming election?
Protesters kept away from the federal prison in Terre Haute during executions last month have filed a lawsuit in federal court, arguing the Indiana State Police violated their First Amendment rights by erecting roadblocks and preventing them from holding vigils immediately outside the entrance of the facility.
The Justice Department scheduled two additional federal executions on Friday, an announcement that comes weeks after it fought off last-minute legal challenges and successfully resumed federal executions following a 17-year pause.
Jury trials in all divisions of the Southern District of Indiana have once again been suspended, Chief Judge Jane E. Magnus-Stinson announced Wednesday. The decision stems from the recent rise in COVID-19 cases across the state and within the district following a brief resumption of jury trials.
The federal government last week carried out its first executions in almost two decades after the US Supreme Court in separate 5-4 rulings turned away last-minute appeals from two condemned inmates’ legal teams. Their executions, and that of a third defendant, were carried out by lethal injection at the federal prison in Terre Haute.
Daniel Lewis Lee, a condemned man and convicted murderer, was asked if he wanted to make a final statement from the execution chamber at the federal prison in Terre Haute. He did. He leaned his head up and we locked eyes. “You’re killing an innocent man,” Lee said, looking directly at me. Those were his last words. He said them to me.
The U.S. government on Friday afternoon put to death an Iowa chemistry student-turned-meth kingpin convicted of killing five people, the third execution by the federal government this week at the federal prison in Terre Haute.
A meth kingpin from Iowa who killed five people, including two young girls, is scheduled Friday to become the third federal inmate to be executed this week, following a 17-year pause in federal executions.
The United States on Thursday carried out its second federal execution this week, killing by lethal injection at the federal prison in Terre Haute a Kansas man whose lawyers contended he had dementia and was unfit to be executed.
A judge on Wednesday halted the execution of a man said to be suffering from dementia, who had been set to die by lethal injection at the federal prison in Terre Haute in the federal government’s second execution after a 17-year hiatus.
The defense team for a man executed in Terre Haute on Tuesday morning in the first federal death sentence carried out in nearly two decades blasted what they called a “shameful” middle-of-the-night process that they contend should awaken public outrage.
The U.S. government on Tuesday carried out the first federal execution in almost two decades, putting to death a man who killed an Arkansas family in a 1990s in a plot to build a whites-only nation in the Pacific Northwest. The execution came over the objection of the victims’ family.
Family members of three people slain in Arkansas more than 20 years ago have been among the most vocal opponents to the federal government’s plan to execute one of the men convicted of killing their loved ones.
The federal government’s efforts carry out the first federal execution in nearly two decades on Monday in Terre Haute, over the objection of the family of the victims and after a volley of legal proceedings over the coronavirus pandemic, was halted Monday, hours after the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals would have allowed the execution to proceed.
The Justice Department is plowing ahead with its plan to resume federal executions next week for the first time in more than 15 years, despite the coronavirus pandemic raging both inside and outside prisons and stagnating national support for the death penalty.
A Terre Haute law firm is owed no additional money from one of its former clients, the Indiana Court of Appeals ruled Monday in an attorney fees lawsuit involving former Illinois Congressman Aaron Schock and his campaign committee.
A Zen Buddhist priest, who is a spiritual adviser to one of three federal death row inmates scheduled to be executed this month, filed a lawsuit Thursday arguing the Bureau of Prisons is putting him at risk for the coronavirus by moving forward with executions during a nationwide pandemic.
The federal courthouses in the Southern Indiana District will reopen to the public July 6 and in-person court proceedings will begin resuming on a staggered schedule. All individuals will be required to answer screening questions to be allowed inside courthouses and to wear facemasks in all public spaces.