The Indiana Supreme Court on Friday ordered the state to execute Jeffrey Weisheit before sunrise Nov. 5, clearing the way for Indiana’s fourth execution since it resumed carrying out death sentences less than two years ago.
All five justices concurred in the Aug. 28 order. Weisheit is scheduled to be executed by lethal injection at Indiana State Prison in Michigan City.
Weisheit was sentenced to death for the 2010 murders of 8-year-old Alyssa Lynch and her 5-year-old brother, Caleb Lynch, who died in a fire at their Evansville home.
“The State of Indiana intends to execute Mr. Weisheit despite the repeated refusal of state and federal courts even to consider the effects of his complex and severe brain damage and mental illness,” attorney Joseph Perkovich of Phillips Black said in a statement to the Indiana Capital Chronicle on Friday. “In this extreme tragedy, killing Jeff will achieve nothing but the infliction of harm upon new victims who will lose their son, brother, or friend.”
The court’s decision came a little more than two months after Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita asked the justices to schedule Weisheit’s execution.
State attorneys argued Weisheit had exhausted his state and federal appeals, had no active stay of execution and could lawfully be put to death. The inmate’s attorneys opposed setting a date, saying they needed more time to pursue available legal proceedings and possible executive clemency.
The defense additionally pointed to public records that it said showed the Indiana Department of Correction lacked the drugs needed to conduct an execution and had no lawful source from which to obtain them.
But the justices said those issues were not properly before them as part of the state’s request to set an execution date.
“A petitioner can raise constitutional claims through a successive petition for post-conviction relief under Post-Conviction Rule 1(12), raise challenges to an execution protocol through a civil lawsuit, or petition the Governor for clemency,” the court said. “But we agree with the State that a ‘Motion to Set Execution Date’ does not implicate any of those proceedings, and the only thing properly before us is the State’s motion.”
The court said it was required to complete the “administrative task” of setting a date.
The order does not prevent Weisheit from pursuing additional legal challenges or seeking clemency from Gov. Mike Braun.
It was not immediately clear Friday whether Weisheit’s attorneys had filed a clemency petition or planned to do so. Braun denied clemency requests from Benjamin Ritchie and Roy Lee Ward before their executions in 2025.
More than a decade of appeals
Weisheit was caring for Alyssa and Caleb while their mother, Lisa Lynch, worked on the night of April 9, 2010, according to court records.
Firefighters arrived at the family’s Evansville home early the next morning and found it engulfed in flames. Alyssa was found in a closet. Caleb was found on a mattress, bound with duct tape and with a washcloth secured in his mouth. Investigators found one railroad flare in his underwear and another beneath his body.
Both children died from smoke and soot inhalation.
Weisheit fled Indiana and was apprehended in Kentucky after a high-speed chase. A jury convicted him in 2013 of two counts of murder and Class A felony arson resulting in serious bodily injury. Jurors found that the state had proven two death-penalty aggravators — multiple murders and the murders of two children younger than 12 — and recommended that Weisheit be put to death.
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The trial court imposed the death sentence, which the Indiana Supreme Court unanimously affirmed on direct appeal in 2015.
Weisheit later sought post-conviction relief, arguing in part that his trial and appellate attorneys had been ineffective. A trial court denied that request, and a majority of the Indiana Supreme Court affirmed the decision in 2018.
Chief Justice Loretta Rush dissented from the portion of that ruling upholding the death sentence. Rush concluded that Weisheit had been denied effective assistance during the penalty phase of his trial and would have ordered a new sentencing proceeding.
“An execution tainted by constitutional error corrodes the integrity of the justice system and of the state that imposed it,” Rush wrote.
Weisheit subsequently sought relief in federal court. The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Indiana denied his habeas corpus petition, and the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld that decision in August 2025.
The federal appeals court concluded that most of Weisheit’s claims were procedurally defaulted and that the remaining claims did not warrant relief. The U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear his case June 8.
Ongoing questions about execution drugs
Indiana law currently requires executions to be carried out by lethal injection.
DOC records obtained by the Capital Chronicle earlier this year showed the state had no pentobarbital or other execution drugs remaining in its inventory as of October 2025, after Ward’s execution.
Indiana has spent at least $1.275 million obtaining pentobarbital since 2024. State officials have repeatedly declined to identify the drug supplier, citing an Indiana law that makes the identities of execution-drug suppliers confidential.
Braun said in June that he was confident Indiana could obtain more pentobarbital once the Supreme Court set another execution date, although he acknowledged that acquiring the drug remained difficult and expensive.
Indiana resumed executions in December 2024, when it put Joseph Corcoran to death after a 15-year pause attributed largely to the state’s inability to obtain lethal-injection drugs. Ritchie was executed in May 2025, followed by Ward in October.
Lawmakers considered, but did not pass, legislation during the 2026 session that would have authorized firing squads as an alternative execution method. The DOC has since confirmed that its new prison in Westville was designed to accommodate both lethal injections and firing squads, although firing squads remain unauthorized under Indiana law.
Weisheit’s execution is scheduled to occur at Indiana State Prison in Michigan City, where the state carried out its three most recent executions.
News organizations, including States Newsroom, which operates the Capital Chronicle, are separately challenging Indiana’s prohibition on media witnesses inside the execution chamber. A divided federal appeals court in June upheld the denial of a preliminary injunction, but the underlying litigation is still ongoing in federal court.
Indiana Capital Chronicle is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Indiana Capital Chronicle maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Niki Kelly for questions: info@indianacapitalchronicle.com.
