Indiana executed Jeffrey Weisheit by lethal injection early Thursday at the Indiana State Prison in Michigan City for the 2010 murders of two children near Evansville, carrying out a death sentence imposed for one of the state's most notorious crimes. The Department of Correction said the execution process began shortly after midnight, and Weisheit was pronounced dead at 12:45 a.m. Central time. He had no final words; his final meal was barbecue ribs and Mountain Dew.
Weisheit was convicted of murdering 8-year-old Alyssa Lynch and her 5-year-old brother, Caleb, in a 2010 house fire. The children's mother, Lisa Lynch, was working an overnight shift and had left them in Weisheit's care. At last month's clemency proceedings she urged officials to uphold his death sentence. Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita said the state had "carried out the lawful sentence of Jeffrey Weisheit, delivering long-awaited justice for Alyssa Lynch and her brother Caleb, two innocent children whose lives were stolen in an act of unspeakable cruelty."
His execution went ahead after his attorneys' last efforts failed. At his October 16 clemency hearing his lawyer urged Governor Mike Braun to intervene, and his legal team sought more time to examine the drugs and procedures Indiana planned to use; the scrutiny of the state's execution-drug purchases is expected to continue even after his death.
The Indiana Capital Chronicle, the only media outlet permitted to witness the execution, reported that the blinds over the chamber window opened at 12:34 a.m. and closed again three minutes later, and that Weisheit did not visibly move or open his eyes while witnesses could see him lying on the gurney as his spiritual adviser spoke over him. His attorney, Joe Perkovich, who witnessed the execution with Weisheit's parents and sister, said afterward that the limited view left him unable to explain what he had witnessed: "I don't know what I saw."
For the Evansville community and the Lynch family, the execution closes a case that has run for more than fifteen years — the sentence a jury imposed for the killings of two children has now been carried out under Indiana law.
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