Anthony Carter
INDIANAPOLIS — The Indiana Supreme Court has upheld the conviction and life without parole sentence of a man who was convicted of killing his girlfriend by shooting her in the head and then suffocating her with a plastic bag at her Bartholomew County home.
Anthony Wayne Carter, 52, of Indianapolis will spend the rest of his life behind bars for murdering Ashley E. Neville, 40, at her home near Azalia in April 2023. He is serving his life sentence at Indiana State Prison in Michigan City, according to the Indiana Department of Correction.
In a recent decision, the state’s high court unanimously rejected Carter’s challenge of his murder conviction and whether there was enough evidence to support a torture aggravator that a Bartholomew Superior Court 1 jury cited as a key reason for recommending life without parole.
Carter had argued that a Bartholomew County court had erred by not giving the jury the option to instead convict him of reckless homicide, which is a lesser charge than murder. He claimed that he accidentally shot Neville in the head and then intentionally hastened her death by taping a plastic bag over her head and putting his hand over her mouth to restrict her airflow.
The justices rejected his arguments.
“Carter argues that the asphyxiation — his securing the bag over Neville’s head — was not an actual or proximate cause of Neville’s death because she would have died from the gunshot wound anyway,” Justice Derek R. Molter wrote in the decision. “But Carter’s argument is flawed. A defendant who kills an already mortally wounded victim cannot escape culpability by arguing that the victim was going to die anyway.”
Carter also argued that the jury erred when finding that prosecutors had proved the torture aggravator, claiming that there was “no evidence that Neville suffered a prolonged period of pain,” according to court records.
The justices’ decision states that the Indiana Supreme Court had previously defined torture as “the intentional infliction of a prolonged period of pain or punishment for coercive or sadistic purpose” or “the gratuitous infliction of an injury substantially greater than that required to commit the underlying crime.”
Molter states in the decision that there is “ample evidence” that Carter prolonged and gratuitously amplified Neville’s pain “for coercive and sadistic purposes.”
“By Carter’s own description, he began using the gun to intimidate Neville, threatening her and demanding that it was ‘time to tell the truth,’” Molter wrote in the decision. “After shooting her and then strangling her with his hands, he eventually suffocated her with a bag over her head, meticulously tightening it over her face with duct tape. As the trial judge described, the duct tape was a ‘tightly drawn, methodically placed device that resembled more of what you would expect to see on a person who had been wrapped like a mummy with duct tape.’ These acts were not, as Carter claimed, ‘acts to end the suffering,’ but rather ‘acts to cause more suffering.’ As Carter himself described, Neville died ‘choking and snarling and gasping and gagging.’ And yet, after Neville died, Carter told his daughter that he did not regret killing her.”
In October 2024, Carter had to be dragged out of a Bartholomew County courtroom after he began arguing with the judge during his sentencing hearing, The Republic reported previously.
During the hearing, Carter lashed out at his attorney, Bartholomew County Prosecutor Lindsey Holden, a detective and Bartholomew Superior Court 1 Judge James Worton.
He accused Holden of staging an “elaborate, sensational mass production” designed to make him seem like monster. After that, he accused a Bartholomew County sheriff’s deputy of feigning concern for him during interviews that took place shortly after the murder.
While addressing the victim’s family, Carter repeatedly characterized the act of taking a gun into the bedroom where Neville was sleeping and shooting her as “my stupid mistake.”
During the hearing, Worton said evidence showed Carter intended to prolong Neville’s suffering, not end it. When the judge began describing how the bag was methodically secured, Carter interrupted him.
“Were you there? No, you weren’t,” he said, before accusing Worton of excluding evidence.
As Worton attempted to take back control of the proceedings, Carter kept talking loudly over him. At that point, the judge called for the eight guards posted in and around the courtroom to take the defendant back to jail.
“I don’t give a (expletive) what your opinion is,” Carter shouted at the judge moments before he was taken into the hall. “You weren’t there!’”
When the hearing resumed with Carter present through video conferencing, the judge said none of Carter’s actions during the night of the murder showed he wanted to end Neville’s suffering.
“You’re wrong,” Carter said as he began talking loudly over the judge’s voice again. Carter’s mic was then muted.
Worton kept his composure throughout the ordeal and made one last observation about Carter and his criminal record that goes back to 1986.
“I’ve never seen a person more deserving of life in prison without parole,” Worton said.
