Prosecutor: Death penalty 'on the table' in Muncie triple homicide
MUNCIE, Ind. — Delaware County Prosecutor Eric Hoffman is contemplating whether three slayings in Muncie on Wednesday warrant the pursuit of a death sentence for those responsible.
Muncie police said Malcolm E. Perdue, 69, and Kyndra K. Swift, 51, were fatally shot shortly before 5 a.m. Wednesday during a robbery at a home in the 2900 block of South Liberty Street.
Perdue's 19-year-old grandson, Kyler Ryan Musick, also was shot to death Wednesday, apparently at a different location. Investigators found his body Thursday night near Prairie Creek Reservoir.
Two Muncie men — Devin Xavier Myers and Daniel L. Jones, both 27 — were arrested on Wednesday. Both are charged with two preliminary counts of murder in the Liberty Street slayings.
Affidavits have suggested Myers was responsible for the shooting death of Musick, too.
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Prosecutor Hoffman said Friday he expected formal charges in the case to be filed early next week.
"At the time it is premature to make a decision one way or the other on whether I intend to seek the death penalty," Hoffman said. "However, I can say it is certainly on the table."
Under Indiana law, a death sentence can be pursued in a murder case if at least one of 18 "special circumstances" exist.
Those circumstances include an "intentional murder" while committing, or trying to commit, crimes including burglary and robbery.
Another circumstance includes committing a murder after having committed another homicide "at any time regardless of whether convicted."
To date, only one person convicted of a slaying in Delaware County has been executed for that crime.
Muncie resident Michael Lambert was sentenced to death in January 1992 after he was convicted of fatally shooting city police officer Gregg Winters more than a year earlier.
After his appeals failed, Lambert was executed by lethal injection in June 2007.
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Another local man, Jay Dull, received the county's first death sentence, in March 1961, after he was convicted of robbing and killing James Tricker, a Muncie cab driver.
After more than a decade on Death Row at the Indiana State Prison, Dull's life was spared by a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in the early 1970s that revoked all pending death sentences.
Dull's sentence was commuted to life, and he was granted parole in the early 1980s. He later returned to prison in 1991 for parole violations, and remained incarcerated at the time of his death in 2008.
Douglas Walker is a news reporter at The Star Press. Contact him at 765-213-5851 or at dwalker@muncie.gannett.com.
This article originally appeared on Muncie Star Press: Muncie crime: Death penalty 'on the table' in triple homicide case
