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1989–2005 · AT RECORD SIZE
The state's list closes this county's capital record with a third name, entered here at the size of the documents and no larger. Alan L. Matheney stands as entry no. 90 on the Department of Correction's list: offense dated March 4, 1989; sentenced May 11, 1990; crime, murder in two counts, with battery and criminal confinement; county of conviction, Lake; executed by lethal injection on September 28, 2005. The South Bend Tribune's reporting before the execution supplies the venue's explanation and the county line: Matheney, a former Granger resident, was tried in Lake County on a change of venue from St. Joseph County, and his execution made him the third man from this county put to death by the state, after Jones in 1897 and Grzyb in 1928 — and the first in more than seventy-five years. The case's facts belong to the court record of that trial and are not narrated here; what this page carries is the line the documents draw: three executions across a hundred and eight years, each at a further remove — hanged in the county's era of the gallows, chaired at Michigan City out of a neighboring county's court, and injected in 2005 out of a trial held at the far end of the state on this county's change of venue.
Sources:
- Indiana Department of Correction, "Indiana Executions 1897–Present" — entry no. 90: Matheney, Alan L., lethal injection September 28, 2005
- South Bend Tribune, August 2005 — the third man from St. Joseph County; conviction in Lake County on change of venue from St. Joseph County