Commentary: A postmortem on dead bills

by Zach Stock, Indiana Capital Chronicle
March 30, 2026

“Could the straggling thoughts of individuals be collected, they would frequently form materials for wise and able men to improve into useful matter.” So wrote Thomas Paine as he midwifed a new nation of laws almost 250 years ago.  

Easy for him to say. He never battled distracted ideas spread across dozens (and dozens) of open browser tabs.  

Still, we should take the time. The straggling thoughts found in failed legislation have wisdom to impart, so something of a postmortem of the past session is in order. We will find that some ideas should worry us, some should humble us, and some just need more time to ripen. All test our values. Several expose the power struggle between courts and lawmakers.  

Concerning ideas

House Bill 1314 (postconviction proceedings) and House Bill 1350 (exclusionary rule) should give us pause. Neither received a hearing this past session, but the shots were unmistakably heard by defense attorneys and courts around the state.   

HB 1314 would have replaced the postconviction procedures promulgated by our Supreme Court and used in Indiana courts for decades with a rigid statutory scheme imposing unforgiving deadlines. The Indiana Attorney General endorsed the idea, claiming it would stop incarcerated persons from draining public resources. That is hyperbole.  

In a system that conducts more than 50,000 criminal and civil trials per year, only 919 postconviction petitions were filed in 2024. And the vast majority of these are resolved without a trial. This is not a system off the rails. Instead, it serves an essential function: safeguarding against wrongful convictions — claims that often take years and new technology to develop.    

HB 1350 similarly takes on a judicial process that isn’t broken. The exclusionary rule allows courts to exclude evidence obtained in violation of the state or federal constitution. It has been a fixture of criminal procedure for over 100 years, and it is the lifeblood of your constitutional right to be free from unreasonable government intrusion. HB 1350 would have stripped Indiana courts of the ability to define the scope of their own constitution, making federal law the sole controlling authority and allowing the police more flexibility to call the shots.      

Courts must have the unfettered ability to rule on government intrusion. An NCAA tournament officiated by the players would be messy. The contest between public safety (police) and individual liberty (everyone else) is no different. It is emphatically the duty of the courts to call the fouls.  Legislatures should leave them to it.                      

Impractical ideas

Speaking of judicial discretion, tough-on-crime legislation often implies that our judges are too soft on crime.  Senate Bill 252 carried that implicit critique. It would have imposed mandatory minimum sentences and reduced other sentencing options.  Much has been written about whether this approach deters crime, but this isn’t the place to rehash that point. We all want to reduce recidivism and contain violence, and reasonable people may always disagree with the wisdom of the tough-on-crime approach.

But one point is not debatable: judges need options. Only a human in the courtroom, with eyes on the defendant, can consider both the explicit costs and the collateral damage of prison. The broken homes, the economic disempowerment, and the cycle of poverty caused by long periods of incarceration are results we choose to accept, not accidents we endure.  

With crime comes consequences for the perpetrator and society alike. Judges have always struck a balance between them. It’s a humbling thought, but from its remote vantage point in the capital city, the legislature lacks the capacity to prejudge every case.                                  

Undeveloped ideas

There are times, however, when the legislature is perfectly positioned to tell courts what to do. For instance, the General Assembly is free to determine – within constitutional parameters – who is and is not eligible for the death penalty. And it can set procedures for determining eligibility.

Enter HB 1432 with a good idea at its core. The rule is simple: the intellectually disabled cannot be put to death. How we determine intellectual disability (“ID”) is more complicated. The bill would have required every death penalty defendant to be actively evaluated for ID.  

It is a worthy idea, but it withered under the intensity of an abbreviated short session. The bill should get attention in the interim. The death penalty is plagued by unacceptable error with respect to factual guilt and moral culpability. If we insist on keeping the ultimate punishment, it’s essential to get this question right.

Second looks

Reflection on past projects should encompass both successes and failures. As Paine knew, “Time makes more converts than reason,” and ideas can be accepted just from “a long habit of not thinking a thing wrong.” Legislation is like that. If we only look at the bills that passed, we will be lulled into thinking every bill filed by the supermajority failed only for a lack of time. Real wisdom is knowing which dead bills deserve to live again and which should stay buried.            

Indiana Capital Chronicle is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Indiana Capital Chronicle maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Niki Kelly for questions: info@indianacapitalchronicle.com.