Indiana governor denies death row inmate clemency ahead of Thursday execution
Nov 02, 2026 | 4:32 pm ET
Description
Jeffrey Weisheit answers questions during his Oct. 16, 2026, clemency hearing at Indiana State Prison in Michigan City. Board members questioned him about the murders of Alyssa and Caleb Lynch and whether he could safely serve a life sentence. (Screenshot from livestream)
Gov. Mike Braun denied clemency Monday to death row inmate Jeffrey Weisheit, rejecting his request for life without parole three days before his scheduled execution for murdering two children.
“I am accepting the Parole Board’s unanimous recommendation to deny clemency for Jeffrey Weisheit,” Braun said in a statement. “The Indiana Department of Correction will continue preparations to carry out the court-ordered sentence of execution on November 5, 2026.”
His statement did not specifically address a separate request from Weisheit’s attorneys for a temporary reprieve to review Indiana’s execution drug purchases and lethal injection safeguards. A reprieve would postpone execution without commuting the sentence.
DOC confirmed Monday that it paid $275,000 for execution drugs and has them in its possession. Weisheit’s execution remains scheduled before sunrise Thursday at Indiana State Prison in Michigan City.
Weisheit, 50, was sentenced to death in 2013 for murdering 8-year-old Alyssa Lynch and her 5-year-old brother, Caleb, in a 2010 house fire near Evansville. Their mother, Lisa Lynch, was working an overnight shift and had left the children in his care.
Braun’s decision followed the Indiana Parole Board’s unanimous Oct. 28 recommendation against clemency. The five-member board heard competing appeals from the children’s parents and testimony about Weisheit’s mental health, remorse and ability to serve a life sentence.
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His attorneys sought life without parole, arguing that evidence of mental illness and brain injuries was not adequately presented during his court proceedings. Prosecutors and investigators urged officials to uphold the sentence.
“The governor has yet to address the central questions emerging from the state’s records,” Weisheit’s defense team said in a statement Monday afternoon. “Why has the state chosen to pay staggering sums to a drugs supplier that the attorney general’s office is simultaneously seeking to shut down and sanction? Why should the public have any belief that the drugs are what they are said to be and not compromised, like the range of medicines the attorney general’s office has found to be in that condition in their efforts to shutdown this pharmacy?”
The children’s father, Steven Lynch, asked Braun to spare Weisheit, saying an execution would inflict another family’s loss without restoring his own.
“What good does it do the memory of my children to put this man to death?” he wrote in a sworn statement.
Lisa Lynch urged the parole board to uphold the death sentence, describing the futures her children lost and the lasting harm of their murders.
“Every single day without them is a struggle,” she told the parole board last month. “Every birthday, every holiday, every landmark moment is marked by their agonizing absence. Time passes, but the weight of losing them never fades.”
During his Oct. 16 clemency interview at the Indiana State Prison, Weisheit apologized but repeatedly struggled to explain why anger toward their mother led him to kill the children.
Indianapolis, IN
