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12 JUNE 1995 · SOUTH BEND — AFFIRMED 1997
In the early morning of 12 June 1995, three armed men — Michael Greer, Terrance Mitchem and Dorian Lee — broke into a South Bend house occupied by four adults, two men and two women. In the course of the invasion the two women were sexually assaulted. The four occupants were made to kneel; Greer, the Supreme Court's account records, announced that he would count to five and they would start shooting. The three men opened fire, discharging twenty-one shots among them. One of the men died; the other three victims, shot repeatedly, survived. The three were tried jointly in the St. Joseph Superior Court.
Greer was convicted of murder, burglary, three counts of attempted murder and criminal deviate conduct, and sentenced to enhanced terms — sixty years for the murder, with the burglary term concurrent and the rest consecutive — an aggregate of 220 years. Mitchem, charged two days after the killings, was convicted on 11 December 1995 of all counts except the burglary, and sentenced to an aggregate of ninety years. Both men carried their sentences to the Indiana Supreme Court, and the court affirmed both judgments in the same week of September 1997: Greer v. State, 684 N.E.2d 1140, on 4 September, and Mitchem v. State, 685 N.E.2d 671, on 5 September, each turning back a challenge to the size of the sentence. The opinions tell the case without naming its victims — the man who died is “the second man” of the court's account — and this section follows the record it has: the names the Tribune printed in June 1995 were not recovered in the sources reached, and the gap is recorded rather than filled. Dorian Lee's separate disposition is likewise not established in the opinions reached.
Sources:
- Greer v. State, 684 N.E.2d 1140 (Ind. 1997) — read first-hand
- Mitchem v. State, 685 N.E.2d 671 (Ind. 1997) — read first-hand