Path: ...!eternal-september.org!feeder3.eternal-september.org!news.eternal-september.org!eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: "Adam H. Kerman" Newsgroups: rec.arts.tv Subject: County's mismanaged budget leads to dropped murder charges in cold case Date: Fri, 25 Apr 2025 16:56:39 -0000 (UTC) Organization: A noiseless patient Spider Lines: 45 Message-ID: Injection-Date: Fri, 25 Apr 2025 18:56:43 +0200 (CEST) Injection-Info: dont-email.me; posting-host="548e72a6de81589a0d7a64f88081552c"; logging-data="461106"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@eternal-september.org"; posting-account="U2FsdGVkX19OrJZtBk9JRbOH7lo82l9uHEgzS9kUEoE=" Cancel-Lock: sha1:2aaoTRYCzt8W31d/fjwMAEV+yCY= X-Newsreader: trn 4.0-test77 (Sep 1, 2010) Bytes: 2891 This is a Steve Lehto video from an article based on a Fox59 Indianapolis local tv news report. Here's the article with video clip from local news broadcast https://fox59.com/news/indynews/indiana-murder-trial-dismissed-due-to-staffing-crisis-and-busy-court-schedule/ and Lehto's video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVH6V183Bng In Kokomo in Howard County, Indiana, police found the murdered man 11/15/2006; a witness said the perpetrator entered and attempted to rob a home, then killed the victim who tried to stop it. Police followed up on tips over the years, then announced in Febrruary 2023 that they were close to bringing charges. A man and a woman were indicted 5/26/2023 and were then arrested on warrants 5/30/2023. After separate trials were scheduled and delayed, a judge dismissed all charges (related to the robbery) against the woman on April 7; later, her bond was dismissed. On 4/22/2025, charges related to the robbery and murder were dismissed against the man. All charges were dismissed without prejudice, which means that they can be refiled, no matter how impractical to do so. The prosecutor simply lacked the personnel to proceed to trial and were behind on plenty of other cases. This didn't come out of nowhere. This is a small county, population 84,000. A prominent murder trial like this will cost a fortune to prosecute, and the prosecutor really wasn't keeping up with smaller cases in the ongoing case log. It's been two years since the indictment, so that was plenty of time for the prosecutor to have laid out his budget and explained to the county board how much this trial would cost, and it would have given him time to hire specific personnel to clean up the ongoing mess of backlogged cases and attorneys and support personnel specific to the big case. Not to mention, the public defender will need more staff too. It's unfortunate that these things cost real money, but what choice is there? Sweeping it under the rug as happened here was the wrong decision.