Court Of Appeals Rules In Favor Of Laurel Five Killer

By Mike Perleberg David Ison appealed his 2012 guilty plea to the Indiana Court of Appeals. (Franklin County, Ind.) - Laurel Five killer David Ison has won a legal battle in the Indiana Court of Appeals that could eventually lead to a new trial. Ison beat, shot, and killed four members of the Napier family and neighbor Henry Smith in a drug deal gone bad in Franklin County in 2011. He pleaded guilty to the murders and was sentenced to life by Franklin Circuit Court Judge J. Steven Cox in 2012. In 2014, Ison filed a pro se petition for post-conviction relief, but amended his petition in 2015 to allege for the first time that his defense counsel was ineffective and that his guilty plea was not knowing, intelligent, and voluntary. Ison had never previously raised issue with his defense attorney. During an appeal hearing in Franklin Circuit Court last July, Ison stated he was threatened with the death penalty when it wasn’t a possibility and made an invalid guilty plea due to mental illness. Ison contended, that at no point did he expressly waive his Boykins rights in pleading guilty. Boykins rights are to ensure that a criminal defendant was informed of, and waived, his or her constitutional rights to a trial by jury, to confront their accuser, and to not self-incriminate. The Indiana Court of Appeals unanimously ruled Tuesday that the local court erred in not considering Ison’s 2015 amended petition. The appellate judges agreed that Ison’s claims of ineffective counsel should have been considered with other grounds raised in the original 2014 motion for post-conviction relief. “In its brief order issued two days after the post-conviction hearing, the court indicated for the first time that it would not consider any of Ison’s claims raised in filings made after the original PCR petition filed in 2014. Without any explanation, the court concluded that the only petition properly before it was the original petition. This was erroneous,” Judge Robert R. Altice wrote in the eight-page opinion. The Court of Appeals has remanded the case to Cox's court to make specific findings of fact and conclusions of law with respect to Ison’s claims of ineffective assistance of trial counsel and involuntariness of his guilty plea. RELATED STORIES: Judge Denies Laurel Five Killer’s Guilty Plea Appeal