COLUMBUS — A nearly 30-year-old murder case in Bartholomew County is set to be retried following a decision by the Indiana Court of Appeals.
The appellate court issued an order granting a new trial to Jason Hubbell, who was convicted by a jury in November 1999 for the 1997 murder of Sharon Myers and sentenced to 75 years in prison.
The legal breakthrough came after the Exoneration Justice Clinic at Notre Dame Law School took up Hubbell’s case. In September 2025, Bartholomew Circuit Court Judge Kelly Benjamin originally vacated Hubbell’s conviction, ruling that state investigators violated his constitutional right to a fair trial by suppressing material exculpatory evidence.
According to defense petitions, investigators failed to disclose crucial evidence on at least nine occasions—data that could have cleared Hubbell or directed authorities toward another suspect. Judge Benjamin noted in her ruling that “tunnel vision” led primary investigators to focus solely on Hubbell while withholding hundreds of pages of documents that implicated another man.
Hubbell’s legal team contends that the primary suspect in Myers’ death is Michael Dean Overstreet, who currently sits on Indiana’s death row for the 1997 murder of 18-year-old Kelly Eckart in neighboring Johnson County.
Attorneys highlighted striking similarities between the two cases, which occurred just months apart:
- Suspect Description and Van: A witness spotted a man matching Overstreet’s description approaching Myers in a parking lot the morning she vanished, alongside a white van identical to the one Overstreet used during the Eckart abduction.
- Location and Cause of Death: Myers’ body was discovered at Camp Atterbury (the Atterbury Wildlife Preserve), adjacent to the area where Overstreet left Eckart’s body. Both victims were strangled with ligatures made from their own clothing and had their shoes removed.
- Withheld Alibi Evidence: Suppressed police records revealed that Overstreet left his home early on the morning Myers disappeared, stated he was heading to her place of employment, and returned at the end of the day covered in blood.
Hubbell has maintained his innocence for decades, pointing out that no DNA, fingerprints, blood, or physical evidence ever linked him to Myers or the crime scene.
Although the Bartholomew Circuit Court initially scheduled a retrial for Oct. 2, 2025, the proceedings were stayed while state prosecutors appealed the decision to vacate. The Court of Appeals has denied multiple petitions from Hubbell requesting release on bond pending the new trial.
The Court of Appeals did not establish an immediate start date for the new trial in its ruling. Overstreet remains on death row at the Indiana State Prison in Michigan City; however, his execution remains stalled after a 2014 ruling declared him mentally incompetent to be executed.
