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1897–2005
The test was run the same way for this city as for its neighbors: the Indiana Department of Correction's official execution list, read against the county's own record, for any man this county sent to execution whose offense was on this ground. Three names in the state's list belong to this county's history. Harry Jones stands first on the DOC's list, hanged May 7, 1897 — a county hanging of the pre-electric-chair era; the record reached for this build does not fix his offense's place or victim, and the gap is carried open in the South Bend file, where the county's capital record is assembled. John Grzyb, electrocuted April 10, 1928, was a man of this county tried on a change of venue in Elkhart County; his offense's place is likewise unplaced in the record reached. Neither man can be assigned to Mishawaka on this evidence, and neither is.
The third name settles the test positive. Alan L. Matheney stands as number 90 on the DOC's list, executed by lethal injection on September 28, 2005, for a killing committed in Mishawaka on March 4, 1989 — the county's only execution of the modern era, and the one case in this record whose offense, prosecution, and punishment are all documented entire. His case is carried whole in its own entry below, at the size its appellate record supports. The test's result, printed at its strength: of the executions this county produced, exactly one — Matheney's — is documented to a Mishawaka offense.
Sources:
- Indiana Department of Correction, official execution list — Jones (no. 1, May 7, 1897), Grzyb (no. 29, April 10, 1928), Matheney (no. 90, September 28, 2005)
- Matheney v. State, 583 N.E.2d 1202 (Ind. 1992), and the case record assembled in the Matheney entry below