SIOUX FALLS, S.D. – A pending U.S. Supreme Court ruling could impact a South Dakota case that shocked the Sioux Falls community in 2016.

This month, the high court justices heard arguments in Kahler v. Kansas, a case that could determine the constitutionality of the insanity defense.

South Dakota lawmakers have considered but rejected legislation to exempt people with mental illness from the death penalty.

Aya Gruber, a professor of criminal law at the University of Colorado, says the Supreme Court has so far relied on a "shock to the conscience" doctrine as grounds for a death sentence.

"Is it possible that a state can go ahead and punish a severely mentally ill person, the same way that they would punish a completely sane person?” Gruber questions. “Or would that be such a grossly disproportionate punishment that it would shock the conscience?"

A Sioux Falls man eligible for the death penalty awaits trial. In 2016, 24-year-old Heath Otto was charged with killing his mother and nephew, and two counts of first-degree murder make him eligible for the death penalty. His defense lawyers later hired experts who diagnosed Otto with schizophrenia and schizoaffective disorder.

In the case before the Supreme Court, James Kahler was convicted and the death sentence was recommended for fatally shooting his ex-wife, her mother and his two daughters. He appealed, claiming his constitutional rights were violated by not being allowed to present an insanity defense.

Gruber notes that insanity is argued in very few cases.

"And of those cases, they're very rarely successful,” she states. “So, this is not like a defense that people are using all the time – this is a rarely used, rarely successful defense."

In death penalty cases, South Dakota currently relies on the M'Naghten Rule, meaning the burden of proof for insanity is on the defendant.

Capital punishment cases typically cost 10 times more than a first-degree murder case, or an average of $1 million more per case than life imprisonment.


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May is National Foster Care Month, and Kentucky advocacy groups across the political spectrum say the state hasn't done enough to keep kids out of foster care, including addressing the high number of parents who are incarcerated.

A report from the conservative, free-market group Kentucky Forum for Rights, Economics and Education, or KY FREE, finds the state would save $74 million in direct incarceration costs, and $740 million annually through indirect socioeconomic costs, if parents had alternatives to prison time.

Sarah Durand, KY FREE's vice president for government affairs, said the consequences of going through childhood without a parent are lifelong.

"If we can keep families together by getting families the help that they need," she said, "we know that that increases the likelihood of children being successful."

One in 10 Kentucky children has experienced a parent's incarceration, which is considered an Adverse Childhood Experience. Experts have said these children are at increased risk of poverty, behavioral problems and poor academic performance.

Earlier this year, Kentucky lawmakers proposed the Family Preservation and Accountability Act. It aimed to reduce the number of primary caregivers behind bars, but stalled in the Legislature. Durand said it offered pathways for people who were nonviolent primary caregivers to avoid incarceration.

"It would ask the courts to consider an alternative sentencing program instead of incarceration," she said. "Maybe they need educational, vocational training in order to improve their situation in life. Maybe they need therapy. Maybe they need substance-abuse treatment."

Durand added that policymakers concerned about strained state budgets should consider the wide-ranging impact on communities when parents are locked up.

"When you look at the long-term consequences and expenses of not trying to keep families together," she said, "it's pretty eye opening."

KY FREE advocates for pretrial diversion programs, which focus on counseling or community service, mental health and veterans treatment courts, and drug court programs as alternatives to incarceration.


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According to researchers from Michigan State University, Yale and Johns Hopkins, ransomware is now the leading culprit behind U.S. health data breaches.

Ransomware is malicious software that hijacks a victim's files or systems and holds them hostage for money. At least four Michigan hospitals have been hit in recent years, including Michigan Medicine, which had more than 55,000 patients affected. McLaren Health Care topped the list with 2.5 million records breached.

The study revealed nationwide, hackers have exposed 285 million patient records over the past 15 years.

John Jiang, professor of information systems at Michigan State University and the study's lead author, said cyber crooks are hunting for specific data.

"They're looking for Social Security numbers, driver's license, individual birthdays," Jiang outlined. "Because they could to use this information to commit fraud, or selling on the black market."

Jiang pointed out health care providers don't have a lot of cybersecurity resources, so he said it is crucial to protect the most sensitive information first, for example, setting up separate systems to handle personal information.

In 2024, ransomware was behind just 11% of health care breaches nationwide but it did the most damage, compromising about 70% of all patient records. The new research builds on earlier studies showing internal mistakes, not hackers, caused more than half of health care data breaches, including lost devices and misdirected emails.

Jiang warned such breaches can also pose serious risks to patients' health.

"This person is allergic to a certain medicine," Jiang suggested. "If the hackers mess up the system, or modified whatever information, that could cause a life-changing event."

The researchers urged federal regulators to require hospitals and insurers to report ransomware attacks, change how they measure breach severity to include care disruptions and track cryptocurrency to stop ransom payments.


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By Johnny Magdaleno for Mirror Indy.
Broadcast version by Joe Ulery for Indiana News Service reporting for the Mirror Indy-Free Press Indiana-Public News Service Collaboration.

There’s a simple patch of grass in section 94, lot 276 of the Crown Hill Cemetery that has perplexed Rebecca Robinson and her two sisters for their entire adult lives.

Their grandparents rest there in unmarked graves.

If a grave marker did exist, it might say Dr. Earle Robinson was a top physician at the old Veterans Administration Hospital on Cold Spring Road. Or that Gwendolyn Robinson left behind multiple grandchildren who, now in their 50s and 60s, can still remember how she encouraged them to read.

So why doesn’t the couple have a tombstone honoring their bright spot in the sisters’ family — and in Indianapolis history?

It’s not the only mystery the sisters have been trying to bring to a close. The other one has burdened them for decades and remains unsolved despite multiple attempts by Indianapolis law enforcement to find an answer.

Why would anyone want to murder them?

There have been many theories as to why the elderly Robinsons — Earle was 70, Gwendolyn, 69 — were stabbed to death in their Riley Towers apartment in August 1975.

Many theories, but zero arrests.

One theory, eventually discarded by law enforcement, was that a disgruntled patient targeted Robinson and his wife.

Another was that Robinson was mistaken for his son — an OB-GYN named Earle Robinson Jr., who fathered the sisters and three other children. Family members say Robinson Jr. may have been a target because he was among the first doctors to provide abortions in the Indianapolis area, according to Diane King, one of the sisters.

The simplest theory is that a home robbery ended in the worst possible way. Police said as much when interviewed by The Indianapolis News a month after the murders, according to old newspaper archives. But even that theory isn’t flawless.

On one hand, it makes sense that Riley Towers would be targeted by burglars. Just over a decade in age, the high-rise apartment buildings were pitched to potential residents as the embodiment of modern, luxurious living. Only “reputable and responsible citizens” would reside there, reads an 11-page advertisement in The Indianapolis Star from May 1963.

Yet strangely, nothing of value had been taken from the Robinsons’ apartment when the couple’s bodies were found. Mattresses were ripped open. Beds were flipped over. Drawers were pulled out and emptied on the floor. And money, jewelry, radio sets and televisions were all still there when police went inside to inspect the crime scene.

Police discarded narcotics as a motive for the break-in. They said Robinson didn’t keep large quantities of drugs in his apartment. They also said whoever did it likely didn’t know he was a doctor, according to newspaper archives.

Rebecca Robinson, 51, is a visual artist who has dedicated much of her creative output to elevating themes of social justice and Black dignity. She wonders if her grandparents’ murders should be thought of not as a one-off, random attack, but as a manifestation of a larger social issue.

“Two affluent Black people living in Riley Towers,” she told Mirror Indy. “Was it just hate?”

New DNA test deflates hopes

City authorities at the time wanted this case solved, Indianapolis police recently told her. Earle Robinson Sr. mattered to the medical community.

As director of admissions at the VA hospital, he oversaw the patient intake process under “rigid standards” imposed by Congress, wrote retired Col. H. W. Buchanan in a September 1975 letter to the editor in The Indianapolis Star.

“He was impeccable in appearance, generous of heart, and totally dedicated to the welfare of his associates and patients,” Buchanan continued. “In visiting the hospital, many veterans and their families would stop by his office to say ‘hello,’ and as busy as he was, he always took time to extend a warm welcome and a concern for their welfare.”

Investigators searched and searched. They interviewed “hundreds” of people, the Star reported. They collected biological evidence from the crime scene that is still preserved in Indianapolis police cold case archives to this day.

Yet after 50 years of painful uncertainty, the Robinson family still hasn’t caught a break. Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department officers invited the family in for an interview in 2023 and committed to testing old evidence samples, possibly tied to the killer, for DNA.

The result: no new information, no new hope.

“The case remains open and Unsolved Homicide Unit detectives continue to follow up on any leads that arise,” IMPD spokesperson Amanda Hibschman told Mirror Indy.

At this point, the family isn’t expecting criminal charges. They’re not waiting for news of an arrest.

They’re looking for a reason to stop wondering — for the relief of knowing more than nothing about who did it, or why.

“Whoever did it is probably dead right now,” acknowledged King, Rebecca’s stepsister and one of the surviving granddaughters. “There’s no recourse or any kind of penalty or charges they can be charged with now.”

“All we want is some kind of closure.”

A gruesome discovery

Don’t turn on the TV.

Michelle Robinson Smith’s mom gave that command to her older brother all those years ago. She was 10.

She was the youngest daughter of five children from Earle Robinson Jr. and his first wife. Rebecca Robinson, the only child Robinson Jr. had with his second wife, Rena, was just 9 months old at the time.

Despite a bitter divorce, the five older siblings still maintained loving relationships with their paternal grandparents.

It’s why Robinson Smith’s mom tried to protect them from news broadcasts that day in August 1975, when she called the older Robinson siblings on her way home from work.

Don’t turn on the TV.

“It was all over the news and the paper,” remembers Robinson Smith.

People close to the family started showing up at their house. One of her mom’s best friends was in tears, Robinson Smith said.

Then their mom arrived. She asked King, Robinson Smith and the other siblings to come upstairs with her. As they gathered together in their brother’s room, she told them the unfathomable news.

Understandably, she did not tell her children just how depraved the killings were.

Earle was stabbed 11 times in the chest. Gwendolyn, 17 times in the chest. Both had slashes on their arms. They were found on the ground, laying next to each other in their nightclothes. Autopsy results suggest they fought with whoever did it.

A Riley Towers building superintendent named Jerry L. Smith discovered their bodies. “I just want to get away from here,” Smith told a newspaper reporter at the scene.

Earle Robinson Jr. was called into the apartment by police to identify his parents, according to a blog he maintained toward the end of his life.

The first thing he saw as he ascended the stairs was a hand sticking through the bannister. He steadied himself.

Then he saw the carpet soaked deep red. Then, the blood on the walls. Once they came fully into view, he could tell his mother and father had been stabbed over and over again.

In the decades that followed, Robinson Jr. rarely said a word about that day. The senseless attack on his family plunged him into grief. His ex-wife was also reticent about what happened.

The three sisters were kept in the dark about the murders. But as they got older, they resolved to fill the gaps left by their parents’ silence.

Family silence leads sisters to investigate

Each became an informal detective.

As teenagers, Robinson Smith and King scoured newspaper archives at the Indianapolis Public Library downtown. As an adult, Rebecca Robinson visited Riley Towers to see if she could get a glimpse of their grandparents’ apartment layout.

But it was King, the oldest of the three sisters, who brought them close to their biggest break.

In 2023, King was talking with a friend who works at a sheriff’s department near her home in Georgia. She started asking about how to get information from law enforcement on a cold case, and shared some details about her grandparents. That friend asked King to send her an email containing specific details.

Within the next few days, King got a call from an IMPD officer. “I was surprised how quickly it happened,” she said.

In the summer, she met with Sgt. David Ellison, an Indianapolis police detective who helped close multiple years-long cold cases before retiring in 2023. Rebecca Robinson was at that meeting. So was their 91-year-old father, Earle Robinson Jr.

Without knowing it was the last interview he’d ever give police, Robinson Jr. spoke about that day in 1975 “like it was yesterday,” said Rebecca Robinson.

In his frail voice, he told detectives about arriving at the apartment and being questioned by police. He talked about how his mom wasn’t wearing her hairpiece — a possible sign that whoever killed them took them by surprise.

King said it was the first time she’d heard him speak in detail about what happened. But a look back at all that transpired for him and his family around the time of the murders helps explain why it took him nearly 50 years to open up.

‘Much of me died along with them’

The murder of Earle Robinson Jr.’s parents marked a clear before-and-after in his life.

Like his father, he had established a career as a physician in Indianapolis. He was one of the many Black doctors and nurses who in the mid-20th century mastered their skills at the Homer G. Phillips Hospital in St. Louis — also like his father.

But after his parents were killed, he seemed to be “always looking over his shoulder,” King said.

He organized a security detail to follow his family around. He started sleeping with a gun under his mattress.

He became distant, said Robinson Smith. “Not because we had done anything … it was just a lot,” she said.

Robinson Jr. talked about the turning point in his blog. “Whatever happens to me I look at as being on borrowed time from that day in August 1975,” he wrote in 2009. “Much of me died along with them.”

He missed his parents’ funeral because he had a severe cardiac arrhythmia on the day they were buried, landing him in the hospital. In other words, his heart was beating too quickly.

The murders were sufficient on their own to alter the course of his life and his family.

But then came a series of threats that made them wonder if the violence wouldn’t stop at Earle and Gwendolyn Robinson.

A threatening letter

You and your baby are next, read the letter sent to Rebecca Robinson’s mom.

I hate you, wrote its author in purple, cursive letters on the heels of the murders. My friends are watching you.

Then came the threatening phone calls targeting Robinson Smith and King’s mom. King later learned that police set up a phone tap on her family’s line to gather info about who was dialing in the threats.

Nothing ever materialized from those threats. Nor did they ever learn if police found out who the caller was.

For the letter, Rebecca Robinson says they knew who wrote it. It was a disgruntled and distant family member who may have held a grudge against Earle Robinson Jr.

Rebecca Robinson’s mom had said she thought the woman was struggling with mental health issues.

But Rebecca Robinson hasn’t completely ruled out that family member, or whoever the caller was, as possible suspects — either directly responsible for her grandparents’ killings or involved in some tangential way.

She was a baby when the murders happened. The added stress of those warnings marked the rest of her young life.

“Certain parents, I remember they wouldn’t allow me to play with their kids,” Rebecca Robinson said. “Like the public knew something, and I was always shunned.”

Earle and Gwendolyn’s family legacy honored

This year marks the beginning of the sixth decade without an arrest in the cold case of Earle and Gwendolyn Robinson.

With the family uncertain if police will ever find who did it, the only option they have now is to honor the life they all lived together before the summer of 1975.

Earle Robinson Jr. died in March 2024. Throughout his life, he’d made it clear to his daughters that he didn’t want a marker or headstone for his parents. Nor did he want to visit where they are buried.

He said it was because he could visit them in his heart. King suspects the real reason is the same one that kept him from ever mentioning the brutal nature in which their grandparents were killed.

“It was just too painful for him,” she said.

In 2023, with the help of King, Rebecca Robinson located her grandparents’ unmarked graves at the Crown Hill Cemetery for the very first time. She stuck two small stakes with hummingbird figures in the dirt as markings.

They respected Earle Robinson Jr.’s wishes while he was here. But now that he’s gone, they’ve made a decision.

It’s a decision to honor memory over trauma, and family legacy over an Indianapolis mystery that may never get solved.

They’re getting a headstone later this year.

Anyone with information about the murders of Earle and Gwendolyn Robinson should call the IMPD Unsolved Homicide Unit at 317-327-3475 or call Crime Stoppers of Central Indiana at 317-262-TIPS.


Johnny Magdaleno wrote this article for Mirror Indy.


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