Crime Records: Open Questions

November 2026 · WHAT COULD NOT BE SETTLED, ITEM BY ITEM

The appellate pull. Whitt v. Town of New Carlisle, No. 20A-CT-2279 (Ind. Ct. App., 20 May 2021): five Town Hall employees alleged that a town police officer, Brian Thompson, among others, had spied on private conversations in the police chief's and the clerk's offices, in violation of the Indiana Wiretap Act and the federal civil-rights statute. The trial court granted the Town summary judgment; the Court of Appeals affirmed. Re-settled at the opinion's strength: the case is civil in form and police in substance, it carries no criminal sentence to re-settle, and its disposition — judgment for the Town, affirmed — is the town's whole appellate footprint in the record reached by the banked passes and this section; a further civil case of 2015 stands in the banked file as not-crime and is not carried. No second criminal appeal naming the town was returned by this section's sweep of the appellate record as reached. The coroner's index. Not read whole for this ground: the St. Joseph County coroner's index is the settler for the Death Crossing's uncounted toll (GAP-NC7-T1) and for the town's unattended-death record generally, and it stands unreached by every pass — the re-log's first entry. The standing re-log — what could not be settled, item by item, with the source that would settle it: (1) the Death Crossing victim count — settler, the coroner's files and the period press, with the New York Central wreck files; (2) the constable and early-marshal succession before the modern line — settler, the town minute books (GAP-NC3-FIRE-1); (3) the marshal's given name — settler, a department roster or payroll record at full legal name (DF-NC-1, carried as this section's delta candidate); (4) the cold-case playing-cards file — the state's cold-case deck programme is the class settler, and whether any case of this ground stands in a deck is untested in the record reached, its viewing route through the state police's cold-case pages; no card is asserted for this town; (5) the coroner's index whole — settler, the index itself, read for the township's names.

Sources:

1. Ron Whitt et al. v. Town of New Carlisle, No. 20A-CT-2279 (Ind. Ct. App. 20 May 2021) — the case summary and disposition as published (Justia) and re-settled here.
2. Crime — the closing register of tested negatives; EXPAND-NC3-NOTE and EXPAND-NC7 material — GAP-NC3-FIRE-1 and GAP-NC7-T1.
3. The second-pass sweep of this section across the appellate record as reached, November 2026.