Indiana: Parole board weighs clemency – victims' father asks for mercy
Ahead of Jeffrey Weisheit's execution, scheduled for 5 November, Indiana's clemency process is under way. The father of the two children killed is asking for a life sentence instead.
Symbolic image · Photo: Diego Delso / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0 (cropped and resized)
The clemency process for death-row prisoner Jeffrey Weisheit has begun in the US state of Indiana. According to the Indiana Capital Chronicle, the parole board is due to interview him today, Friday, at the prison in Michigan City, with a public hearing set for Monday, 19 October, in Indianapolis. Written materials were due by Thursday. The board will then make a recommendation, with Governor Mike Braun having the final say. The execution by lethal injection is scheduled for 5 November.
Weisheit was convicted in 2013 of killing two siblings, aged eight and five, in a 2010 house fire in Evansville. According to the report, the children's father has asked for clemency and a sentence of life without parole in a notarised affidavit. "Jeffrey, I forgive you," he reportedly wrote. He stressed that he speaks only for himself. Neither parent responded to the newspaper's requests for comment.
Weisheit's lawyers want the execution moved to 19 November so that new brain scans can inform the clemency decision; the attorney general's office opposes this. The Indiana Supreme Court declined to delay the hearings but has not yet ruled on the rescheduling. Braun rejected two clemency requests last year. Of the process, he said, according to media reports: "We're not going to dismiss it" – but neither would it be slowed down. It would be Indiana's fourth execution since executions resumed in December 2024.