Jeffrey Weisheit Executed Despite Urging of Attorneys and State Lawmakers to Pause Execution Over Concerns with Lethal Injection Drug Supplier

Attorneys for death row prisoner Jeffrey Weisheit and a group of state lawmakers urged Indiana Governor Mike Braun to grant a temporary reprieve ahead of Mr. Weisheit’s November 5 execution date, arguing the state should not proceed until questions about its lethal injection drug supply were answered. After Gov. Braun rejected those calls, Mr. Weisheit was executed by lethal injection before sunrise on the 5^th at Indiana State Prison. He was convicted of killing two children, Alyssa and Caleb Lynch, in a 2010 house fire, and his execution marks the state’s 4^th execution since it ended a 15-year pause in December 2024.

State Representative Bob Morris and fellow Republican lawmakers joined Mr. Weisheit’s attorneys during a press conference at the Statehouse, calling on Gov. Braun to issue a reprieve. Mr. Weisheit’s attorneys said the Indiana Department of Correction (DOC) bought its pentobarbital from an Indianapolis pharmacy that the attorney general’s office is seeking to shut down due to safety issues. They identified the pharmacy as Pharmaneek Inc. Indiana law keeps the identity of execution-drug suppliers confidential, but improper redactions by the DOC left the pharmacy’s address recoverable in documents. The attorney general’s office said it was confident the DOC could carry out the execution both safely and lawfully.

According to Mr. Weisheit’s reprieve application, the pharmacy is on probation, and the attorney general’s office has documented unsanitary storage conditions and expired drugs in its inventory over the past year. The application said the Board of Pharmacy ordered the pharmacy to show why its license should not be suspended on an emergency basis. On September 25, DOC paid the pharmacy $275,000 in advance for six 50-mL vials of pentobarbital, about 17 times the ordinary cost of the drug. On September 29, the application alleged, the pharmacy moved its Board of Pharmacy hearing from October 5 to November 9, four days after Mr. Weisheit was scheduled to be executed.

Mr. Weisheit’s counsel also said the DOC had not provided any verification that the pentobarbital vials, which they say were delivered on October 29, were kept within the required temperature range or remain potent and uncontaminated. The Indiana Capital Chronicle previously obtained DOC temperature logs showing readings outside the recommended storage range.

The reprieve request was separate from Mr. Weisheit’s clemency petition. The victims’ father had supported Mr. Weisheit’s request for clemency, asking, “[w]hat good does it do the memory of my children to put this man to death?” Days before the scheduled execution, Gov. Braun accepted the Indiana Parole Board’s recommendation to deny clemency and said DOC would continue to prepare for the execution. His statement did not address the reprieve request, which Gov. Braun later denied without any public statement. The Indiana Supreme Court, in a 3 – 2 decision, rejected a final request for a stay of execution just two hours before the state was set to carry out Mr. Weisheit’s execution. Chief Justice Loretta Rush and Justice Christopher Goff both dissented and would have “grant[ed] a 10-day stay for the parties to provide immediate submissions on the drugs’ formulation, expiration, storage, and any testing; counsel’s disclosure and filings chronology; and the exhaustion defense.”

Indiana executed Mr. Weisheit in the early morning hours of November 5. The Indiana Capital Chronicle was the only media outlet to witness his execution, and only because Mr. Weisheit had added them to his list of personal witnesses. Indiana does not otherwise specifically allow for the presence of media witnesses during executions. None of the witnesses were able to see the establishment of the IV lines, nor could they determine where precisely the lines had been set, as a sheet was covering much of Mr. Weisheit’s body. The curtains to the execution chamber opened at 12:34am CT, closed three minutes later, and Mr. Weisheit’s time of death was later announced as 12:45am CT. Gov. Braun’s office released a statement confirming Mr. Weisheit’s execution had been carried out:

“Jeffrey Weisheit’s case has been heard and reviewed numerous times by both state and federal courts, including the Indiana Supreme Court, since his conviction in 2013. These reviews have never resulted in an overturned sentence. The State Parole Board issued a unanimous recommendation to deny Weisheit’s final appeal for clemency and that his execution proceed as scheduled. Today, Weisheit’s sentence has been carried out as ordered by the court.”

Following Mr. Weisheit’s execution, his counsel wrote, “This is a dark day for all involved with this within the executive branch, which moved in lockstep in stonewalling not only Mr. Weisheit’s advocates, but also the media, by refusing to address any single element of the array of cold hard facts about this staggering chain of events.” They raised concern about Pharmaneek’s continued production of drugs, noting that “unless emergency steps are taken, this pharmacy will continue supplying medicine to the public, jeopardizing Indianans up and down the state, because the governor, the attorney general, and the corrections department could not step back from the public display of their power to take a life in the people’s name at essentially any cost.”