Indiana holds public clemency hearing as Pike botch shadows death-penalty debate
The parole board hears witnesses for and against clemency for a death-row prisoner today. The father of the two slain children supports a life sentence.
Archive image · Photo: Steve Shook from Moscow, Idaho, USA / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0 (cropped and resized)
Indiana's parole board is taking public testimony in Indianapolis on Monday on Jeffrey Weisheit's clemency request – supporters in the morning, opponents in the afternoon. Weisheit was sentenced to death in 2013 for killing two children aged eight and five in a 2010 house fire in Evansville, and his execution is set for November 5. The board's recommendation is nonbinding; the decision rests with Governor Mike Braun.
Questioned at the prison on Friday, Weisheit said: "There is no excuse or explanation for what I did" and "I want to live now." The children's father has signed an affidavit supporting life without parole: "What good does it do the memory of my children to put this man to death?" he wrote, according to the Indiana Capital Chronicle. The board does not expect to issue a recommendation before October 23.
The case unfolds in the shadow of Christa Pike's failed execution in Tennessee, which used pentobarbital – the same drug Indiana uses. "It does give you pause," Braun said, while adding that the execution remains scheduled for now. The defence wants it moved to November 19 to allow brain scans. The state supreme court declined to delay the clemency hearings; the request to move the execution date is still pending.