The administration of Indiana Governor Mike Braun will not allow death row prisoner Jeffrey Weisheit to undergo additional brain scans before his scheduled execution next week, closing the route the Indiana Supreme Court had left open when it refused to intervene. Braun's general counsel, Stephanie Flittner, met Weisheit's legal team on Wednesday, October 28, to discuss the testing and his pending clemency request, and the administration's position was reported on Thursday, October 29, by the Indiana Capital Chronicle and Indiana Public Media. Braun had previously said he would consider the medical evidence if it became available. The governor has still not announced his final clemency decision.
This is the latest development in a sequence Awaaz Punjab has been following: on October 22 the Indiana Supreme Court unanimously refused to postpone the November 5 execution or order Weisheit's transport for testing, while noting the executive branch could authorise the scans without a court order; on October 27 Weisheit's lawyers pursued a reprieve application over the state's lethal-injection procedures; and on October 28 the Indiana Parole Board unanimously recommended that Braun deny clemency. Thursday's decision means the scans the defence sought will not happen before the execution date unless the governor changes course.
What the defence wanted, and why
In a letter to Braun, Weisheit's attorney Joseph Perkovich asked that his client be transported to Franciscan Health in Michigan City for MRI and PET scans. The testing would have allowed University of Pennsylvania neuropsychologist Ruben Gur to assess whether brain injuries came before the 2010 killings — two children, ages 8 and 5, died in a house fire near Evansville while their mother worked an overnight shift. Indianapolis psychiatrist R. Andrew Chambers separately supported the request, saying modern imaging could help distinguish earlier injuries from one Weisheit suffered during his arrest. The defence argument is that the 2013 jury decided his fate without reliable scientific information about the extent of those injuries and what they did to his behaviour.
What the Parole Board told the governor
The Parole Board's unanimous recommendation, in a letter to Braun signed by Chair Gwendolyn M. Horth, rejected the assertion that Weisheit simply “snapped,” pointing to preparations before the killings that included emptying bank accounts, quitting his job and attempting to return his girlfriend's engagement ring. The board said it considered testimony and evidence about Weisheit's mental illness and neurological deficiencies but concluded the jury had sufficient information to impose the death penalty: “The information we were presented with does not greatly distinguish his situation from a vast majority of incarcerated individuals,” the panel wrote. The board also cited 13 prison conduct reports against Weisheit, including battery on incarcerated individuals, disruptive behaviour and animal cruelty, the most recent in May 2025. Its recommendation is nonbinding; the final clemency decision rests with Braun alone.
The board heard two days of proceedings this month — Weisheit himself answered questions at Indiana State Prison in Michigan City on October 16, and the panel heard public testimony, including competing appeals from the children's parents, on October 19. Weisheit acknowledged what his lawyer called the “unspeakable” crimes when he addressed the board, while Perkovich argued his client has a history of head injuries and mental health problems that did not get enough attention at the 2013 trial. A federal judge, Sarah Evans Barker, had already ruled on October 7 that she lacked authority to force state officials to transport Weisheit for scans.
Braun can commute Weisheit's sentence to life in prison without parole, grant a temporary reprieve that delays the execution without overturning the sentence, or let the November 5 execution proceed. An informal request for a temporary reprieve is also pending before him over concerns about Indiana's lethal-injection procedures — a separate application from Weisheit's lawyers, reported earlier this month, arguing Indiana uses the same drug and supplier as Tennessee, where a prisoner survived two doses of pentobarbital in September. Braun denied clemency in Indiana's two most recent comparable cases, those of Benjamin Ritchie in 2025 and Roy Lee Ward, according to reporting by the Evansville Courier & Press.
The execution-drug question running underneath
The Indiana Department of Correction released a $275,000 invoice for execution drugs earlier this month but has not provided an updated inventory log confirming their receipt; previous records showed no pentobarbital remaining after Indiana's October 2025 execution. Indiana resumed capital punishment in December 2024 after a long pause and has used pentobarbital in its three executions since. The state is also one of only two that do not allow members of the media to witness executions, according to information presented by Weisheit's attorneys — a secrecy that his legal team argues makes outside scrutiny of the drug supply and protocol especially important, and that state officials defend on security and operational grounds.
What happens next
Weisheit, 50, is scheduled to be executed by lethal injection before sunrise on November 5 at Indiana State Prison in Michigan City. Between now and then, the only decision that can stop or delay it is Braun's: he has not announced whether he will grant clemency, grant the pending reprieve request, or allow the execution to proceed, and Thursday's refusal of the brain scans removes the new-evidence route his own earlier comments had left open. Weisheit's lawyers could still seek last-minute intervention in federal court, as death row lawyers routinely do in the final days of a case, but no court can order the scans the governor's office has now declined to allow.