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Court Rejects Convict’s Appeal For A New Trial The Indiana Supreme Court Monday denied efforts of a man serving a life term for murder who sought a new trial on the rounds he was frightened by the electric chair at Indiana State Prison. Donald Childs, Anderson, had been indicted by the Madison County grand jury on a first degree murder charge for the 1968 death of Alvin Robinson. The case was switched to Henry County. A Henry County circuit court jury deadlocked in 1969 and a new trial was ordered. In the meantime Childs was transferred to the state prison at Michigan City for safekeeping. Then when he was brought back to Henry County for his second trial he entered a plea of guilty to second degree murder. He later filed a petition for post-conviction re lief, alleging he was ‘‘coerced”’ into the plea by threats made by guards at the state prison and by being shown the electric chair, located at that institu tion. The denial of post-conviction relief by Henry Circuit Court was upheld Monday by the Supreme Court in an opinion stating that ‘at a post conviction hearing, the trial court is the sole judge of the evidence and the credibility of the witnessess...The petitioner is asking this court to usurp this function...We decline to do this.” At the post-conviction relief hearing, the guards named by Childs as having threatened him and showed him the electric chair denied that such an incident ever took place. One of the guards testified his only contact with Childs was a disturbance in which he, the guards captain, was injured by Childs who threw a metal mirror at him. Childs offered as a witness at this hearing a former inmate who testified he heard the conversation about the electric chair over the ‘‘sewer system” in the prison. He said that inmates in the solitary confine ment section of the state prison would talk to each other by dipping the water out of their toilets and talking and listening through the pipes.
Newspaper Details
Jasper Herald
Jasper, Indiana, US
Tue, Jan 28, 1975
Page 22
Full Page
Clipped by
Lara D.
