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INDIANAPOLIS – The Indiana Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that convicted police killer Zolo Agona Azania will not be eligible for life in prison without parole when an Allen County jury decides his fate again.
The justices had previously decided that prosecutors could seek the death penalty for the third time against Azania, who killed Gary police officer George Yaros during a botched bank robbery in 1981.
But Wednesday’s ruling further clarified which death penalty statute applied – the current scheme or the one that existed in 1981.
The case was long ago shipped to Allen County because of pretrial publicity in Gary.
Azania was first convicted in 1982. Since then, his death penalty sentence has been overturned twice, but his conviction is still intact. The first reversal resulted from ineffective assistance of counsel and a discovery violation by prosecutors.
In 2002, his death sentence was reversed again because of a computer glitch in Allen County’s jury system that systematically excluded many potential black jurors.
After the case was sent back for a third sentencing trial, it landed in the hands of Special Judge Steven David of Boone Circuit Court.
In 2005, he barred prosecutors from seeking the death penalty again, partly because of the difficulty in presenting a mitigation defense with numerous witnesses and experts dead and some evidence lost. But the Indiana Supreme Court intervened this year, saying prosecutors could try again.
That decision left two lingering questions.
First, would Azania be eligible for life in prison without parole – an option given to jurors in 1993?
The court found that the law authorizing life without parole specifically states that it is available only in cases where defendants committed their crimes after June 30, 1993.
The second question was whether a judge or jury would ultimately decide Azania’s fate.
When the crime was first committed, juries made a recommendation of death or a term of years. But the judge had the right to accept the recommendation or impose a different sentence he felt was more appropriate.
In 2002, the legislature changed the law so that judges must abide by jury findings in capital cases. The court found that Azania must be sentenced under those rules.
nkelly@jg.net
