State Supreme Court upholds death penalty for 1997 murder

INDIANAPOLIS – The Indiana Supreme Court upheld the death sentence for a mentally ill man convicted in the 1997 abduction, rape and slaying of a Franklin College student – but not without reservations.\nAttorneys for Michael Dean Overstreet had argued that his severe mental illness at the time he was convicted of killing Kelly Eckart would make his execution cruel and unusual punishment under the state Constitution.\nJustice Robert Rucker, who wrote the dissenting opinion issued Tuesday, agreed.\nRucker said 41-year-old Overstreet’s mental illness impeded his thought processes to a point comparable with mental retardation. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that mentally retarded people are ineligible for the death penalty, and Rucker wrote that he believed Indiana’s Constitution offered even greater protection.\n“Because I see no principled distinction between the diminished capacities exhibited by Overstreet and the diminished capacities that exempt the mentally retarded from execution, I would declare that executing Overstreet constitutes purposeless and needless imposition of pain and suffering thereby violating the Cruel and Unusual Punishment provision of the Indiana Constitution,” Rucker wrote in the 46-page opinion.\n“Therefore, I would remand this cause to the post-conviction court with instructions to impose a sentence of life imprisonment without parole.”