"PASSAGE OF THE DAY: "In September 1997, 18-year-old Eckart’s shocking disappearance became national news. After working a shift at the Walmart in Franklin, Indiana, her car was found at an intersection, the keys still in the ignition. Eventually, evidence showed Overstreet had abducted her in a white van, removed her shoes and taken her to the Atterbury Fish & Wildlife Area, where he strangled her with a ligature made from her own clothing. DNA evidence confirmed Overstreet was the killer, and he was sentenced to death in 2000. A little more than a month after Eckart’s body was found, Myers, missing since May, was also found dead at Atterbury. She too had her shoes removed and had been strangled with her own clothing. The similarities were “striking,” Franklin Police Chief Harry Furrer told the Johnson County Daily Journal in November 1997. “They are attention getters.” Despite those commonalities, investigators in the Myers case focused on Jason Hubbell, who worked with Myers at automotive parts manufacturer Arvin Industries."
PASSAGE TWO OF THE DAY: "In a 2019 evidentiary hearing, Bartholomew County prosecutor Kathy Burns said the Overstreet case “has nothing to do with this case.” The state, calling the Overstreet connection a “fishing expedition,” said Overstreet was “thoroughly investigated at the time” and ruled out as a suspect. Nonetheless, the court vacated the conviction and ordered a new trial. “The state’s failure to disclose the material exculpatory evidence undermines the confidence in Hubbell’s guilty verdict and deprived Hubbell of his right to a fair trial,” the judge wrote."
PASSAGE THREE OF THE DAY: "During Hubbell’s evidentiary hearings, Overstreet exercised his right to not testify. He continues to be held on death row at Indiana State Prison in Michigan City, Indiana, but in 2014, he was declared incompetent for execution. Hubbell, who was sentenced to 75 years in prison, remains incarcerated as the prosecution prepares for an expected appeal. If the prosecution loses the appeal, it will then decide whether to retry the case."
STORY: "Notre Dame exoneration clinic notches third victory in 15 months," by Reporter Pat Pemburton, published by Courthouse News, on January 16, 2026. (Courthouse News Service is a nationwide news service for lawyers and the news media. Based in Pasadena, California, Courthouse News focuses on civil litigation, from the date of filing through the appellate level. Unlike other Internet-based publishers that simply aggregate information prepared by other content providers, Courthouse News publishes its own original news content prepared by its staff of reporters and editors based across the country.)
(GIST): "As police in Johnson County, Indiana, investigated Michael Dean Overstreet for the September 1997 abduction, rape and murder of college student Kelly Eckart, Overstreet’s wife described a day, four months before Eckart’s abduction, when Overstreet came home mysteriously covered in blood he claimed was from a bar fight.
A couple of days later, the wife said, she learned that a woman named Sharon Myers had vanished from her workplace in nearby Bartholomew County — the same place Overstreet told his wife he was headed the day he returned home with bloodstained clothes.
While that evidence might have suggested that Overstreet could have killed both Eckart and Myers, his wife’s testimony and other evidence related to Overstreet was never made available to attorneys representing Jason Hubbell, the man convicted of murdering Myers in 1999.
“There were stunning similarities between the Myers and Eckart murders,” Bartholomew County Circuit Judge Kelly S. Benjamin wrote in September. “The state deprived Hubbell of a fair trial by suppressing evidence that clearly provided a link between Myers and Overstreet that Hubbell’s attorneys should have been able to investigate and present at trial, to link Overstreet as an alternative suspect and to call into question the integrity of the investigation.”
The judge’s 83-page ruling to vacate Hubbell’s conviction was a significant victory for the Exoneration Justice Clinic. A feature of the University’s of Notre Dame’s law school, the clinic took up Hubbell’s case, and students, clinic staff and alumni worked diligently to uncover key evidence pointing to an inmate who has been on death row since 2000.
“The Hubbell case is a great example of how the Exoneration Justice Clinic at Notre Dame provides law students and even undergrad students with opportunities to immerse themselves in wrongful conviction cases and will be an instrumental part in helping wrongfully convicted individuals,” said clinic attorney and professor Kevin Murphy, who has led the Hubbell efforts. “We had students involved three years ago at the intake stage. Then we had students who were involved with investigating the case, we had students drafting the post-conviction petition, drafting the discovery, assisting with preparing depositions, and then even putting on live witnesses at the evidentiary hearing in February of 2025.”
The clinic was formed in 2020 by Jimmy Gurule, a former prosecutor and expert on international crime and terrorism. He first became interested in wrongly convicted cases after Keith Cooper, who was wrongly convicted of an armed robbery in Elkhart, Indiana, spoke to Notre Dame law students about the nine years he served in prison and his eventual exoneration.
“Keith’s presentation was very compelling,” Gurule said. “And a number of students after the presentation came to me, and they wanted to know how they could assist and volunteer to work on wrongful conviction cases.”
That led to a wrongful conviction course where students helped to exonerate Andrew Royer, who had served 16 years in prison for a murder he didn’t commit. In that case, students helped show Royer, who had a mental disability, was coerced to confess to the strangulation of an elderly woman.
“Andy was released from prison, and it was an emotional and celebratory day,” Gurule said. “And at that point, I decided to take the next step and propose to the law school that the wrongful conviction externship be elevated to a full-fledged legal clinic.”
For students, he said, the clinic provides valuable, real-world experience.
In her work with the clinic, law student Alex Ragland has performed legal research, reviewed motions, discussed strategy and performed witness interviews.
“Other people I know in law school have never done a witness interview,” Ragland said.
When she entered law school, she had hoped to one day work in administrative law, possibly with the Environmental Protection Agency. “And then I started working at the clinic, and I became interested in criminal law,” she said. “I’m going to go into criminal defense after graduation, so it absolutely impacted my career path.”
While the clinic provides students with valuable experiential learning, it also allows the law school to have a positive impact, helping disadvantaged, marginalized members of society.
Murphy, who worked in Chicago as a business litigation attorney, was the first full-time attorney hired, taking a substantial hit in salary so he could help such clients.
“I had done a little bit of pro bono wrongful conviction work,” he said. “I felt like that was a calling for me.”
As his work with exoneration cases intensified, Gurule, who had worked as a prosecutor for nearly a decade, researched wrongful conviction cases more thoroughly and became concerned about the statistics.
“Today we have over 3,700 documented exonerations in this country since 1989,” he said.
One primary reason for wrongful convictions, he said, falls on prosecutors withholding key evidence.
Technological advances, such as DNA technology, cellphone data and even surveillance cameras, have aided some of the wrongfully accused. But with many older cases, evidence has been destroyed, impairing the ability to mount appeals using better technology. For that reason, the clinic worked with the Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law’s Wrongful Conviction Clinic to enact legislation that requires DNA testing and analysis be preserved for 20 years after a conviction.
The Notre Dame clinic typically learns of cases from the inmates themselves. Gurule said he personally reads each request. If he sees a reasonable innocence claim a thorough vetting process begins, starting with an intake team that performs a preliminary investigation. After a decision is made to accept the case, an investigator is assigned for a deeper look.
“The staff lawyers have to be convinced that the individual is innocent,” Gurule said. “And it’s not just that he or she is innocent, but there are viable avenues to prove his or her innocence.”
Despite the challenges with older cases — witnesses often die, for example — the clinic has had significant success. The Hubbell case is the third major legal victory in 15 months. And it is the most high profile case the clinic has handled.
In September 1997, 18-year-old Eckart’s shocking disappearance became national news. After working a shift at the Walmart in Franklin, Indiana, her car was found at an intersection, the keys still in the ignition. Eventually, evidence showed Overstreet had abducted her in a white van, removed her shoes and taken her to the Atterbury Fish & Wildlife Area, where he strangled her with a ligature made from her own clothing.
DNA evidence confirmed Overstreet was the killer, and he was sentenced to death in 2000.
A little more than a month after Eckart’s body was found, Myers, missing since May, was also found dead at Atterbury. She too had her shoes removed and had been strangled with her own clothing.
The similarities were “striking,” Franklin Police Chief Harry Furrer told the Johnson County Daily Journal in November 1997. “They are attention getters.”
Despite those commonalities, investigators in the Myers case focused on Jason Hubbell, who worked with Myers at automotive parts manufacturer Arvin Industries.
Hubbell, investigators theorized, was upset at Myers, who worked in human resources, over an insurance benefit he was denied.
Myers was last seen arriving at work on May 13, 1997. One witness saw Myers and a man walking in the parking lot, as the man held the back of her neck. While Hubbell had called in sick that day, the witness made a mental note of a white van she believed the two entered, and the plates matched Hubbell’s.
But as Johnson County law enforcement investigated Overstreet for the Eckart case, they shared things they had learned about him with Bartholomew County investigators, thinking he could be a suspect in the Myers case as well.
Overstreet had used a white van in the Eckart case. Witnesses said he had talked of having an affair with a woman named Sharon in Columbus, and there was the day he returned home in a white van, covered in blood, after telling his wife he was going to Columbus to apply for a job.
Yet the Myers investigators didn’t follow those leads, and Hubbell’s defense attorneys never had access to that evidence, which could have provided jurors with a reasonable doubt.
During recent evidentiary hearings with the Notre Dame clinic, Dennis Knulf, the lead investigator for the Columbus Police in the Myers case, acknowledged he omitted evidence that implicated Overstreet.
“Knulf had his sight on one suspect only and that was Hubbell,” the court wrote in the order to vacate. “This tunnel vision led to Knulf and the CDP withholding material exculpatory evidence that either implicated Overstreet in the Myers homicide and/or linked Overstreet to Myers.”
Knulf had been removed from the active case after he spoke to the media because he was upset that the prosecution wavered on whether to charge Hubbell.
No DNA, hair, blood or fingerprint evidence ever connected Hubbell to the Myers murder, and the witness description of the man in the parking lot with Myers didn’t match Hubbell. But the prosecution has argued that even if the withheld evidence had been admitted, Hubbell still would have been convicted.
Hubbell also made incriminating statements to a cellmate and told an investigator it might have been possible he committed the crime during an episode.
“When I asked him to explain further he states he knows that he does things during his episodes that he can’t remember,” an investigator wrote in his report, “so he always has doubts now about things he could have done.”
In a 2019 evidentiary hearing, Bartholomew County prosecutor Kathy Burns said the Overstreet case “has nothing to do with this case.”
The state, calling the Overstreet connection a “fishing expedition,” said Overstreet was “thoroughly investigated at the time” and ruled out as a suspect.
Nonetheless, the court vacated the conviction and ordered a new trial.
“The state’s failure to disclose the material exculpatory evidence undermines the confidence in Hubbell’s guilty verdict and deprived Hubbell of his right to a fair trial,” the judge wrote.
The ruling was well received at the exoneration clinic.
“I felt like all of our hard work over the years had been recognized, and I also felt like Jason got his day in court,” said Ragland, who worked on the case.
During Hubbell’s evidentiary hearings, Overstreet exercised his right to not testify. He continues to be held on death row at Indiana State Prison in Michigan City, Indiana, but in 2014, he was declared incompetent for execution.
Hubbell, who was sentenced to 75 years in prison, remains incarcerated as the prosecution prepares for an expected appeal. If the prosecution loses the appeal, it will then decide whether to retry the case.
“We advocated strongly on behalf of our client, and we believe justice was done with the judge’s ruling,” Gurule said."
The entire story can be read at:
https://www.courthousenews.com/notre-dame-exoneration-clinic-notches-third-victory-in-15-months/
PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue/resource. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. The Star has a "topic" section which focuses on recent stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It can be found at: http://www.thestar.com/topic/charlessmith. Information on "The Charles Smith Blog Award"- and its nomination process - can be found at: http://smithforensic.blogspot.com/2011/05/charles-smith-blog-award-nominations.html Please send any comments or information on other cases and issues of interest to the readers of this blog to: hlevy15@gmail.com. Harold Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog.
SEE BREAKDOWN OF SOME OF THE ON-GOING INTERNATIONAL CASES (OUTSIDE OF THE CONTINENTAL USA) THAT I AM FOLLOWING ON THIS BLOG, AT THE LINK BELOW: HL:
https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/120008354894645705/4704913685758792985
FINAL WORD: (Applicable to all of our wrongful conviction cases): "Whenever there is a wrongful conviction, it exposes errors in our criminal legal system, and we hope that this case — and lessons from it — can prevent future injustices."
Lawyer Radha Natarajan:
Executive Director: New England Innocence Project;
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FINAL, FINAL WORD: "Since its inception, the Innocence Project has pushed the criminal legal system to confront and correct the laws and policies that cause and contribute to wrongful convictions. They never shied away from the hard cases — the ones involving eyewitness identifications, confessions, and bite marks. Instead, in the course of presenting scientific evidence of innocence, they've exposed the unreliability of evidence that was, for centuries, deemed untouchable." So true!
Christina Swarns: Executive Director: The Innocence Project;
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