Julie McClure | The Republic Jason Hubbell is escorted by Bartholomew County Sheriff deputies to the courtroom for a pre-trial hearing in his murder case on Thursday, Oct. 2, 2025.
A local man whose conviction in a 1997 murder and criminal confinement case was overturned by Bartholomew Circuit Court Judge Kelly Benjamin was denied bond or to be released on his own recognizance Thursday while his appeal proceeds.
Jason Hubbell, 53, is incarcerated in the Pendleton Correctional Facility serving 75 years in prison for the murder and confinement of Sharon Myers. He was present in the courtroom for Thursday’s hearing. A motion seeking a speedy trial in the case after the previous verdict was overturned was also denied.
In a pretrial conference moved to Bartholomew Superior Court 1 due to the estimated 70 people in attendance, Benjamin ruled in favor of Bartholomew County Prosecutor Lindsey Holden-Kay’s motion for a stay in the proceedings while the case is under appeal before the Indiana Court of Appeals.
Holden-Kay, who is appealing Benjamin’s ruling overturning a Bartholomew Circuit Court jury’s guilty verdict in the case, argued that the stay would preserve the status quo and ensure the appellate courts may review the court’s decision before futher proceedings are undertaken.
When the conviction was overturned on Sept. 12, Benjamin ruled Hubbell and his attorneys had “met his burden of showing that he is entitled to post-conviction relief.”
Holden-Kay declined further comment after the hearing.
Hubbell is currently in the custody of the Bartholomew County Jail, according to Sheriff Chris Lane.
Hubbell was previously convicted in the case by a Circuit Court jury on Nov. 5, 1999, accused of abducting Myers in a parking lot outside Arvin Industries on May 13, 1997. According to court records, Hubbell was a former Arvin employee whose benefits were handled by Myers. During the trial, a witness testified Hubbell was having difficulty getting insurance benefits and that Myers was treating him coldly. The body of Myers, who was killed by strangulation, was discovered six months after her disappearance, at Teal Marsh in Atterbury Fish and Wildlife Area north of Columbus, according to court records.
Hubbell, who has a projected released date in 2035, alleged in his appeal that an individual now on death row actually committed the crime.
In an amended petition for post-conviction relief seeking a new trial and DNA testing, Hubbell and his attorneys allege that death row inmate Michael Dean Overstreet, who was convicted for the 1997 killing of Kelly Eckart in Johnson County, killed Myers.
In the petition to be released from prison, Hubbell alleges he was “torn from his wife, his young son, other family members and friends and was deprived of his liberty” after Columbus police concealed information about Overstreet in advance of Hubbell’s trial, “and then for decades … while Hubbell languished in an Indiana prison.”
According to the filing, Hubbell “has every intention of fighting the criminal charges against him until he is fully exonerated, as he has been doing from behind prison walls for decades.”
Hubbell is being represented in the appeal by his own attorneys and the Exoneration Justice Clinic at the Notre Dame Law School.
According to the appeal petition, Myers was abducted in May 1997 from Arvin’s Gladstone plant in Columbus in a white van. The assailant removed her shoes, strangled her with a ligature fashioned from her own clothing and left her body with the ligature around her neck near the marsh in Atterbury Wildlife Preserve where it was found six months later, the petition states.
The petition states Eckart was abducted in a van after leaving her job at Walmart in Franklin in September 1997. In this abduction, the assailant removed Eckart’s shoes, strangled her with a ligature fashioned from her own clothing and initially left her body in a remote part of Atterbury, the petition states. In both cases, there were indications that a sexual assault had occurred.
In the Eckart case, a male DNA profile was generated consistent with Overstreet’s DNA, the petition states. At Overstreet’s 2000 trial, his brother, Scott Overstreet, testified that he drove his brother to Atterbury the night Eckart was abducted and that his brother told him he had “taken a girl” and had to “get her lost,” according to court records. Based on evidence at his trial, Overstreet was convicted of the murder, rape and criminal confinement of Eckart and sentenced to death, according to the petition.
After Hubbell was charged with murder and criminal confinement of Myers in August 1998, Hubbell’s attorneys sought all information implicating other suspects in the case, according to the petition. Then, Columbus Police Department Detective Dennis Knulf testified that there was no information connecting Overstreet to the crime, the petition states.
According to the petition, no DNA, fingerprints, hair or blood ever linked Hubbell to the crime. Hubbell was convicted and sentenced to 75 years, a judgement that was reaffirmed on direct appeal, according to court documents.
In August 2020, Hubbell sought habeas relief from the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Indiana, resulting in a judge granting Hubbell discovery from law enforcement agencies that had investigated both murders, according to the petition.
In his appeal, attorneys for Hubbell argued prosecutors withheld material exculpatory evidence in violation of Hubbell’s rights under the Brady vs. Maryland case and the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
Bartholomew County prosecutors have acknowledged that investigators failed to disclose certain information to the defense during Hubbell’s trial but argued the withheld evidence is unlikely to have changed the trial’s outcome.
Prosecutors also argued that the withheld information did not meet the legal threshold required to overturn a conviction.
“Considering these items collectively, there is a very low likelihood that disclosure of these items would have led to a different result at trial and therefore … the petitioner (Hubbell) is not entitled to a new trial based on the state’s failure to disclose these items,” Holden-Kay said in proposed findings of fact and conclusions of law filed in Bartholomew Circuit Court.
However, in the judge’s findings of fact, Benjamin cites numerous specific examples of evidence withheld from the defense that was suppressed by the state and was favorable to Hubbell, much of it detailed in the defendant’s appeal.
In one portion of the findings of fact, the court specifies that “Knulf intentionally failed to truthfully inform (Sean) Thomasson (Hubbell’s defense attorney) of the information he was aware of linking Overstreet to Myers and implicating him in Myers’ murder as an alternate suspect.”
The judge further wrote, “Knulf’s testimony was misleading and was a significant barrier to Thomasson in gaining information, or being able to investigate information, that could be material and substantive to the presentation of his alternate suspect theory, two-person suspect theory or used to impeach witnesses … such as Knulf.”
Benjamin found that Hubbell, by a preponderance of the evidence, showed he was entitled to a new trial, because the state failed to disclose favorable and material exculpatory evidence to Hubbell and his attorney.
“This failure eliminated the ability of Hubbell’s attorneys to obtain crucial evidence linking Overstreet to Myers and implicating Overstreet in the Myers’ murder, in order to include Overstreet as a viable alternate suspect. This failure also eliminated the ability of Hubbell’s attorneys to challenge the integrity of law enforcement’s investigation to rule out other suspects and discredit/impeach Knulf. The state’s failure to disclose the material exculpatory evidence undermines the confidence in Hubbell’s guilty verdict and deprived Hubbell of his right to a fair trial,” the judge wrote.
The judge also notes “stunning similarities” between the Myers and Eckart murders, noting their bodies and belongings were found within two miles of one another at Atterbury.
“Ultimately, when viewing all the evidence discussed in the findings of fact together, the amount of evidence that was favorable to Hubbell, but withheld from him, is overwhelming,” the judge write. “The evidence implicating Overstreet aligned with trial evidence.”
In 2014, a South Bend judge ruled Overstreet was not mentally competent to be executed but would remain on death row until the state could prove he was competent. St. Joseph County Judge Jane Woodward Miller ruled that Overstreet’s severe case of paranoid schizophrenia prevents him from rationally understanding his execution, meaning he cannot be put to death.
The state elected not to appeal the judge’s ruling, however, Overstreet’s death sentence has not been commuted, so if his mental condition ever improves, the state could make an attempt to reschedule the execution. He will continue to be kept on death row at the Indiana State Prison in Michigan City for the rest of his life, according to court records from 2014.
