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1989–2005
On March 4, 1989, Alan Lehman Matheney murdered his former wife, Lisa Bianco, in Mishawaka. He was then a prisoner at the Correctional Industrial Facility at Pendleton, serving a sentence for the battery and criminal confinement of Bianco herself and for taking their children across state lines in violation of a court order; the state had let him out that day on an eight-hour furlough, a pass authorizing travel to Indianapolis. He went instead to St. Joseph County. He took an unloaded shotgun from a friend's house, broke into Bianco's Mishawaka home through the back door, chased her outside when she ran, and beat her to death with the gun — the stock broke in the beating. The furlough, the pass's stated destination, and the victim's identity are the case's permanent indictment of the system that issued it, and they are stated here as the case record states them.
The prosecution's paper runs unbroken for sixteen years. Matheney was charged in St. Joseph County (cause 71D05-8903-CF-000181; information filed March 7, 1989), with death-penalty counts added March 20 — the aggravating circumstances being an intentional killing during a burglary and lying in wait. Venue changed on January 25, 1990, to Lake County (cause 45G02-9001-CF-00022), where a jury convicted him of murder and burglary on April 11, 1990, and unanimously recommended death the next day; he was sentenced to death on May 11, 1990. The Indiana Supreme Court affirmed the conviction unanimously and the sentence four-to-one, Justice DeBruler dissenting on the sentence alone (Matheney v. State, 583 N.E.2d 1202, January 9, 1992); post-conviction relief was denied and affirmed (688 N.E.2d 883, 1997); federal habeas failed in the Seventh Circuit (Matheney v. Anderson, 253 F.3d 1025, 2001). The end came in the summer of 2005: by order of August 29 the state supreme court set the date, on September 24 it ruled five-to-nothing against his final claims, on September 27 Governor Mitch Daniels denied clemency, and in the first minutes of September 28, 2005, Matheney was executed by lethal injection at the Indiana State Prison at Michigan City — the fifth Indiana execution of that year, and number 90 on the Department of Correction's list, as the executions-test entry above records.
Two conflicts and one consequence are printed at their strengths. The record does not agree on the victim's age: the Clark County prosecutor's compilation of the state's capital cases gives Lisa Bianco as thirty-four, while the Associated Press-derived accounts give twenty-nine or thirty; both stand, unmerged. What needs no attribution is the fact the furlough itself established: the state had written down, in a prior judgment, exactly what this prisoner had done to this woman, and let him out for a day anyway.
Sources:
- Matheney v. State, 583 N.E.2d 1202 (Ind. 1992); 688 N.E.2d 883 (Ind. 1997); Matheney v. Anderson, 253 F.3d 1025 (7th Cir. 2001)
- Indiana Supreme Court order of August 29, 2005, and the September 2005 rulings in State v. Matheney (Justia) — the date-setting and final dispositions
- Clark County Prosecuting Attorney, death-row case compilation — the killing, the furlough, the St. Joseph and Lake County cause numbers and dates; the victim's age as thirty-four
- Amnesty International, Urgent Action 243/05 (2005) — the clemency posture and execution date; Associated Press-derived accounts — the victim's age as twenty-nine/thirty and the execution, September 28, 2005