Activists Sue Indiana State Police For Preventing Anti-Death Penalty Protest

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Activists Sue Indiana State Police For Preventing Anti-Death Penalty Protest

August 6, 2020  
TheStatehouseFile.com
Posted by and written By Andrea Rahman
INDIANAPOLIS—A group of anti-death penalty activists sued the Indiana State Police for constructing roadblocks to prevent them from protesting executions at the Federal Correctional Institution in Terre Haute.
The Indiana chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union filed the suit on behalf of Indiana Abolition Coalition, Providence of Saint-Mary-of-the-Woods Indiana, Death Penalty Action, and multiple individuals who protested the executions Tuesday in the Southern District of Indiana. The ACLU is seeking a preliminary injunction to allow the advocates to protest executions scheduled in late August and September outside the main entrance of the federal prison on public property or on private property with permission from owners.
Aerial photo from Google of the General Dollar store across the road from the federal prison at Terre Haute was anti-death penalty activists want to protest.

Indiana State Police erected barricades and closed the surrounding roads to prevent protesters from standing within almost two miles of the execution site in early July when three federal inmates were put to death. The ACLU argues that the barricades violated their right to protest.

The anti-death penalty advocates had planned to stand on public property at the entrance to the prison to voice their opposition to the executions. They had also received permission from the management to stage their protest on the grounds of the Dollar General located on Prairietown Road and across the street from the institution.

Because of the roadblocks, protestors were forced to gather in the parking lot of a car dealership a few miles away from where they could not see the prison and were far removed from the execution chamber.

“There is absolutely no justification for keeping plaintiffs’ members and the individual plaintiffs this far from the entrance to the institution and doing so severely compromises their ability to express themselves and to express their opposition to the death penalty while in sight of the prison,” the lawsuit states.

Three inmates were executed on July 14, 16, and 17 in Terre Haute, which were the first federal executions since 2003. The first was Daniel Lewis Lee, a white supremacist who murdered a family in Arkansas; the second was Wesley Ira Purkey, who raped and murdered a 16-year-old girl; and the third was Dustin Lee Honken, who murdered five people in Iowa.

U.S. Attorney General William Barr announced earlier in the year that the government would go forward with federal executions, 17 years after the last man was put to death.

The next execution is scheduled for Aug. 26 when Lezmond Mitchell, the only Native American on the federal death row, is set to die for killing an Arizona woman and her 9-year-old granddaughter in a carjacking.

When asked to comment, Public Information Officer Sgt. Matt Ames for the Putnam District said it was against policy to discuss pending litigation.

FOOTNOTE: Andrea Rahman is a reporter for TheStatehouseFile.com, a news website powered by Franklin College journalism students.

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1 COMMENT

  1. Our Police Officers are critically important public servants.

    More and more police officer forces are ethnically diverse, and I consider that an improvement that will pay more dividends than any other.

    We have a duty to support them.

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