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Court hears Indiana man's appeal in arson deaths of 2 kids

Posted September 07, 2017 7:00 am

The Associated Press

INDIANAPOLIS (AP) - The Indiana Supreme Court is weighing the appeal of a man sentenced to death for setting a house fire that killed his fiancÃ©e's two children.

The justices heard arguments Thursday in 41-year-old Jeffrey Weisheit's appeal.

Weisheit was convicted in 2013 of murder and arson in the 2010 deaths of 5-year-old Caleb Lynch and 8-year-old Alyssa Lynch at the family's Evansville-area home. Weisheit contends he wasn't adequately represented by his trial attorneys.

John Pinnow is Weisheit's appellate attorney. He says Weisheit's trial attorney asked once for his juvenile records but gave up after being told they had been destroyed.

Pinnow says those records were actually in Indiana's archives and contained "valuable information" about Weisheit's history of depression.

Indiana deputy attorney general Kelly Loy argued that Weisheit's trial attorneys were "highly qualified."

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