Rokita appeals ruling in special-session case directly to Indiana high court | Indiana journalgazette.net - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from journalgazette.net Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
HAMMOND â Lake Superior Judge John Sedia holds in his hands the future of Lake County government operations.
In coming days, Sedia will decide whether to renew his April 16 decision giving the Lake County Council control over purchasing and data processing, or to revise his prior ruling as requested by the Board of Commissioners that currently manages both departments.
Sedia heard arguments Thursday by two attorneys intimately involved in Lake County government for decades: John Dull, for the commissioners; and Ray Szarmach, for the council.
Dull passionately, but politely, made the case Sedia got it wrong three months ago when the judge concluded a 1981 Indiana law assigns authority over purchasing and data processing to the Lake County Council, regardless of whether the council has chosen to exercise that authority in the years since.
South Bend Tribune
SOUTH BEND A former University of Notre Dame student is suing the university, seeking to be reimbursed for tuition and student fees from when classes went virtual in the spring of 2020 because of COVID-19.
Notre Dame, like many colleges and universities around the country, moved classes online in mid-March of last year and sent students home amid concerns of COVID-19 spreading through college campuses.
The lawsuit, filed in federal court last week by Evan Slattery, is one of more than a hundred lawsuits brought by students against colleges and universities in the wake of COVID-19. Similar lawsuits brought by students at Harvard and Yale have recently been dismissed, while the Indiana Court of Appeals is currently litigating legal action against Indiana and Purdue universities.
Credit JAKOB LAZZARO / WVPE
A 43-year-old Elkhart man wrongfully convicted in a 2002 murder case has been officially exonerated after the state granted a motion from the Elkhart County Prosecuter to dismiss the charges on July 19.
Andrew Royer, who has an intellectual disability and no prior criminal record, was coerced into confessing to the murder a 94-year-old woman found dead in a high-rise apartment near downtown Elkhart in November 2002 after two days of mostly unrecorded interrogation by Elkhart Police Department detective Carl Conway.
Royer was subsequently convicted in a 2004 trial and spent 16 years in prison until the University of Notre Dame’s newly-formed Exoneration Justice Clinic took up his case.