News & Commentary

The youngest person ever put on death row was Paula Cooper of Gary, Ind. She was 15 when the crime was committed. At the time she was sentenced, Indiana law permitted executions for those as young as 10. Her sentence, death in the electric chair for fatally stabbing a 78 year-old woman in a burglary, attracted international attention. Even Pope John Paul II condemned the sentence and urged clemency. In 1987, the Indiana legislature passed a bill raising the minimum age for a defendant in a death penalty case from 10 to 16 years old. However, since the bill was not retroactive, Cooper's status was not affected.

On Nov. 6, the Indiana Supreme Court issued a ruling that reversed the trial court's decision, saying "Indiana's personalized license plates are government speech," and that denial of a personalized license plate does not violate the First or Fourteenth Amendments. A copy of the decision, No. 49S00-1407-PL-494, can be downloaded here.

Eric Smith, of Lebanon, Ind., came to the Soldiers and Sailors Monument in downtown Indianapolis in July 2012 to express his opposition to the United Nations Arms Trade Treaty, which he believed threatened his Second Amendment rights.

Through door-to-door democracy, the Indiana affiliate of the Citizens Action Coalition (CAC) has been able to advocate effectively for nearly four decades on behalf of Hoosiers. CAC canvassers go from house to house in residential neighborhoods during the evening hours to educate citizens and gather petition signatures on issues such as utility rates and regulations, health care, and the environment.

Daniel Littlepage, a Native American, is a prisoner confined at the Miami Correctional Facility located in Bunker Hill, Indiana. His religion requires him, among other things, to pray with others in a Sacred Circle. John Walker Lindh, a prisoner at the Federal Correctional Institution in Terre Haute, Ind., practices Islam, which requires him to participate in group prayer. Paul Veal, a prisoner at the Pendleton Correctional Facility, is a practicing African Hebrew Israelite, a religion which mandates communal worship and study as a necessary component of creating a lifestyle that complies with the desires and commandments of God.

In 1970, when Larry Reuben first started "hanging out at the ICLU," he was a law student at Indiana University. In 1972, Larry graduated and set up practice not far from the Thomas Building on East Washington Street in Indianapolis, where the Indiana Civil Liberties Union, as it was then known, was located.

Wanting to educate the public about the fine details of the federal healthcare law, attorney David Kolhoff contacted the Allen County Public Library about setting up his laptop on a mobile cart in a large open plaza abutting the library.

Any student at Winamac Community Middle School who wanted to join the football team was allowed to play „ unless that student was a girl. So when "C.B.," a seventh grader at the school, and her Dad asked the principal and the athletic director if she could join the previously all-male football team, she was turned away.

Race weekend in Indianapolis is full of special traditions for the hundreds of thousands of spectators who gather in Speedway, Ind. It also is a lucrative weekend for taxi drivers, who shuttle people to and from the crowded Speedway track. However, in May 2013, as many as 80 cab drivers had their licenses seized on race day, according to the Speedway Police Department