Five men sit on Indiana death row as of late 2025, all held at the Indiana State Prison in Michigan City. After roughly 15 years without a state execution, Indiana carried out two in quick succession: Joseph Corcoran in December 2024 and Benjamin Ritchie in May 2025. The death penalty remains an active part of the state’s criminal justice system, with detailed statutes governing who qualifies, how the sentencing trial works, and the years of appeals that follow.
Who Is on Indiana’s Death Row
All death-sentenced men in Indiana are housed at the Indiana State Prison in Michigan City, the state’s maximum-security facility. They live in administrative segregation, confined to single cells for most of the day with limited contact with the general population.
- Eric D. Holmes — sentenced in 1993 for a double murder during a 1989 robbery at a Marion County restaurant. His federal appeals have been denied, and the U.S. Supreme Court declined to take his case.
- Kevin Isom — sentenced in 2013 for killing his wife and her two teenage children in Gary in 2007. His case is still under federal habeas corpus review.
- Jeffrey Weisheit — sentenced in 2013 for the deaths of two children in Vanderburgh County after setting a house on fire. His most recent federal appeal was denied in 2023.
- William Clyde Gibson III — sentenced in separate cases in 2013 and 2014 for strangling three women in Floyd County. His federal appeals are ongoing.
- Michael Dean Overstreet — sentenced in 2000 for the 1997 kidnapping, rape, and murder of an 18-year-old in Johnson County. He was declared mentally incompetent for execution in 2014, effectively suspending his death sentence unless a court later finds him competent.
Only four of the five are currently considered competent for execution. No new inmates have been added to Indiana’s death row since 2013, though several defendants around the state currently face capital murder charges. No women are under a death sentence in Indiana.
What Crimes Qualify for the Death Penalty
Not every murder is death-eligible in Indiana. A prosecutor can seek a death sentence only if at least one of eighteen specific aggravating circumstances exists.1Indiana General Assembly. Indiana Code 35-50-2-9 – Death Penalty Sentencing Procedure The prosecutor must list the aggravator on a separate page of the charging document and prove it beyond a reasonable doubt at trial. Without at least one, the harshest available sentence for murder is life without parole.
The eighteen circumstances fall into a few broad groups:
- Killing during another serious felony, such as arson, burglary, robbery, kidnapping, rape, child molesting, carjacking, criminal confinement, or dealing in cocaine or narcotics.
- Killings defined by method: explosive detonation, lying in wait, murder-for-hire (either side of the transaction), dismemberment, torture, mutilation, burning, or decapitation.
- Killings defined by the victim: a child under twelve; a law enforcement officer, corrections employee, probation or parole officer, firefighter, or judge acting in the line of duty; or a witness killed to prevent testimony.
- Killings tied to the defendant’s history: a prior murder conviction, another murder committed at any time regardless of conviction, or being in Department of Correction custody, on probation, or on parole at the time.
- Killings defined by manner: intentionally firing into an occupied home or from a vehicle, or killing a pregnant victim and intentionally terminating the pregnancy.
How a Death Sentence Is Imposed
Capital cases in Indiana use a two-phase trial. The first phase is a standard murder trial: the jury hears evidence and decides guilt. If the jury convicts, the case moves to a penalty phase where the question shifts to whether the defendant should live or die.
The prosecution presents evidence of the aggravating circumstances alleged in the charging document. The defense answers with mitigating evidence, meaning anything about the defendant’s background, character, mental health, or the circumstances of the crime that argues against death. Indiana’s statute does not limit what the defense can offer. Common mitigators include childhood abuse, intellectual limitations, mental illness, age, lack of prior record, and a lesser role compared to co-defendants.
The jury can recommend death or life without parole only if it finds the state proved at least one aggravating circumstance beyond a reasonable doubt and that the aggravators outweigh the mitigators. If the jury reaches a recommendation, the judge must follow it. If jurors cannot agree after reasonable deliberation, the court dismisses them and the judge conducts sentencing alone under the same weighing test.1Indiana General Assembly. Indiana Code 35-50-2-9 – Death Penalty Sentencing Procedure
Who Cannot Be Executed
Two categories of defendants cannot be put to death in Indiana even after a death-eligible conviction. If a court determines a defendant has an intellectual disability, the portion of the charging document seeking a death sentence must be dismissed.2Indiana General Assembly. Indiana Code 35-36-9-6 The trial court makes that determination, and Indiana’s statute cross-references a separate chapter defining the standard.3Indiana General Assembly. Indiana Code 35-50-2-1.5 – Individual With an Intellectual Disability
Separately, an inmate who becomes mentally incompetent after sentencing cannot be executed while that condition persists. Michael Dean Overstreet was declared incompetent in 2014; his death sentence remains in place but is effectively suspended, and can only be carried out if a court later finds him competent. Intellectual disability blocks a death sentence permanently. Incompetency delays execution until the condition changes.
Appeals and Post-Conviction Review
A death sentence triggers a lengthy, layered review. Most cases spend years, sometimes decades, in this stage before reaching any resolution.
Direct Appeal
Every death sentence goes straight to the Indiana Supreme Court, bypassing the Court of Appeals. A notice of appeal is filed in the trial court within 30 days of sentencing.4Indiana Attorney General. Appeals Process After the trial record is assembled, the defense briefs the errors it claims occurred, the state responds, oral argument may follow, and the court issues an opinion affirming or reversing the conviction or sentence.
Post-Conviction Relief
When the direct appeal ends, a defendant can file a petition for post-conviction relief in the original trial court. This separate proceeding raises claims that were not available on direct appeal, most commonly newly discovered evidence, constitutional violations, or ineffective assistance of trial counsel.4Indiana Attorney General. Appeals Process Indiana sets no strict filing deadline, but the state can raise a “laches” defense if the petition comes unreasonably late. A denial can be appealed through the normal appellate process.
Federal Habeas Corpus
Once state options are exhausted, an inmate can file a federal habeas corpus petition in U.S. District Court. Federal courts review whether the state conviction or sentence violated the U.S. Constitution. Federal law imposes a one-year filing deadline, paused while a state post-conviction petition is pending. Kevin Isom and William Clyde Gibson both have cases at various stages of federal review.
Executive Clemency
The Indiana Constitution gives the governor the power to grant reprieves, commutations, and pardons for all offenses except treason and impeachment.5Indiana History Bureau. Article 5 – Executive A death row inmate’s clemency petition goes first to the Indiana Parole Board, a five-member panel that holds a private interview with the inmate and a public hearing where attorneys, victims’ families, and other interested parties can testify. The board makes a recommendation, but the governor alone decides whether to commute the death sentence to life, grant a temporary reprieve, or deny clemency. Petitions are typically filed in the final weeks before a scheduled execution.
How Executions Are Carried Out
Indiana law requires execution by lethal injection: intravenous administration of a lethal substance in a quantity sufficient to cause death.6Indiana General Assembly. Indiana Code 35-38-6-1 – Manner of Inflicting Death Penalty The statute does not name a drug. Indiana historically used a three-drug combination, but when executions resumed in 2024, the Department of Correction switched to a single-drug protocol using pentobarbital, a powerful sedative. A redacted state contract later showed the department paid $900,000 to acquire the drug, though quantity and purchase date were not disclosed.
State law strictly limits who can attend. The statute allows the warden, the prison physician, one additional physician, the prison chaplain, the inmate’s spiritual advisor, up to five friends or relatives invited by the inmate, and up to eight adult members of the victim’s immediate family.7Indiana General Assembly. Indiana Code 35-38-6-6 – Persons Permitted to Be Present at Execution of Death Sentence The press is not on that list. A journalist can attend only if the condemned inmate uses one of their five personal invitations to bring them in.
Indiana’s Return to Executions
Indiana’s last execution before the long pause was Matthew Wrinkles in 2009, put to death for murdering his wife, her brother, and her sister-in-law. For the next 15 years, no executions took place, largely because of difficulties obtaining lethal injection drugs and ongoing litigation.
Joseph Corcoran, December 2024
The state broke the hiatus on December 18, 2024, when Joseph Corcoran was executed by lethal injection at the Indiana State Prison. Corcoran had been sentenced to death in 1999 for a quadruple murder in Allen County. He was severely mentally ill and had waived his remaining appeals. This was Indiana’s first use of the single-drug pentobarbital method. Corcoran was pronounced dead at 12:44 a.m. His spiritual advisor was permitted physical contact with him in the execution chamber after a federal lawsuit forced the Department of Correction to allow it.
Benjamin Ritchie, May 2025
Five months later, on May 20, 2025, Indiana executed Benjamin Ritchie, sentenced in 2002 for a murder in Marion County. Ritchie’s defense attorney, in the witness room, reported seeing Ritchie lift his head and shoulders “violently” from the gurney shortly after the process began. Two other witnesses gave similar accounts. A medical expert who reviewed those accounts called the execution “botched,” saying a properly administered dose of pentobarbital should render a person completely still almost immediately. The Department of Correction disputed that characterization and said the execution followed protocol.
Media Access Lawsuit
The absence of independent media witnesses at both executions fueled a federal lawsuit, Associated Press v. Neal, filed by a coalition of news organizations challenging Indiana’s statutory framework for excluding the press unless the inmate personally invites them. The case was appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, where oral arguments were heard in February 2026. A ruling is pending.