Death Penalty News

After death row inmate Joseph Corcoran challenged the state’s motion for an execution date to be set, counsel at the attorney general’s office are attempting to poke holes in Corcoran’s legal arguments and pressing for the Indiana Supreme Court to grant the execution request. Earlier this month, Corcoran’s lawyers said in court filing that he is “unquestionably seriously mentally ill” and therefore should not be subject to the death penalty.

Claims capital punishment violates state constitution Fort Wayne attorney David Frank filed the suit last week on behalf of Roy Lee Ward, who was sentenced to death in 2001 for the rape and murder of 15-year-old Stacy Payne in Spencer County. The suit, filed in La Porte Superior Court 2, names Gov. Eric Holcomb and Robert Carter Jr., commissioner of the Indiana Department of Corrections, as defendants. A similar motion, filed last year on behalf of murder suspect Marcus Dansby, is pending in Allen County Ward’s sentence was appealed all the way to the Indiana Supreme Court, which upheld the death penalty in the case in 2012. However, a federal judge issued a stay of execution that same year, and no date has been set for execution by lethal injection at ISP. The suit claims the death penalty is “arbitrary and capricious, without legitimate penological end, offensive to evolving standards of decency, and unconstitutional.” It claims Indiana should follow the lead o...

A lawsuit naming Gov. Eric Holcomb filed on behalf of a prisoner on Indiana’s death row urges a state court to issue an injunction halting capital punishment and rule that the state’s ultimate criminal penalty violates the Indiana Constitution. The suit was filed Tuesday in LaPorte Superior Court, which has jurisdiction over the Indiana State Prison in Michigan City. The prison houses Indiana death row and the state’s lethal injection chamber. Fort Wayne attorney David Frank filed the suit on behalf of inmate Roy Lee Ward, who is on death row at Michigan City after he was convicted in 2001 of the rape and mutilation killing of 15-year-old Stacy Payne in Spencer County. Spokespeople for Holcomb and Attorney General Curtis Hill, whose office would represent the Department of Correction and presumably the governor’s office in this litigation, did not immediately respond Friday to email messages seeking comment. The Indiana Supreme Court in June 2012 affirmed Ward’s sent...

Allen County prosecutors want a judge to reject claims by a man facing the death penalty that he shouldn't be executed because of his age. Marcus Dansby was 20 years old – 12 days shy of his 21st birthday – when he allegedly killed 4 people, including his unborn child, Sept. 11, 2016. Now 23, he has argued through his lawyers that executing people who were younger than 21 at the time of their alleged crimes violates the constitutional prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment. The U.S. Supreme Court has held that it is unconstitutional to put to death offenders who were 18 at the time they committed the crimes. Dansby's lawyers want to extend the age to 21, asking a judge to throw out the death penalty as a sentencing option because of growing research on the maturity of young people's brains and a “national consensus” against executing defendants younger than 21. Deputy Prosecutors Tom Chaille, Jeff Steinberg and Alison Yeager state in court documents file...