Christopher Peterson was 21 years old when four people were killed in two Indiana towns in the space of about a week in December 1990. Two of them, Harchand Dhaliwal and Marie Meitzler, died in Portage, in Porter County. The other two, the brothers Ilija (Eli) and George Balovski, died in Gary, in Lake County. Peterson, who later took the name Obadyah Ben-Yisrayl, was arrested in late January 1991 and charged with seven killings in all. Over the next year he was tried four times. Two Lake County juries acquitted him of three of the charges. A Porter County jury convicted him of the two Portage murders in March 1992, and a Lake County jury convicted him of the two Gary murders in May 1992. Both courts sentenced him to death.
A long series of appeals followed. The Indiana Supreme Court upheld both death sentences. A federal appeals court then found that the Porter County trial had been constitutionally unfair, and the Lake County death sentence was replaced, after a change in how Indiana treated such sentences, with two consecutive sixty-year terms. Some of the dates of the killings are also given a day later, and the later fate of the Porter County charges is not on record.
His appeals ran under both names: the Lake County direct appeal of 1996 as Peterson v. State, in the name of Christopher D. Peterson, and the Porter County appeal of 1997 and the later proceedings in the name Obadyah Ben-Yisrayl, "f/k/a Christopher D. Peterson", meaning formerly known as. By 2004 the Indiana Supreme Court referred to him as "Christopher Peterson, now known as Obadyah Ben-Yisrayl". When and why he changed his name is not on record.
Another Indiana prisoner, Chijioke Bomani Ben-Yisrayl, formerly Greagree Davis, shares the surname. He was convicted in Marion County in 1984 in an unrelated case, and the two should not be confused.
Marie Meitzler and Harchand Singh Dhaliwal were killed in Portage within two days of each other: Dhaliwal on December 13, 1990, and Marie Meitzler on December 15, 1990 (also given as December 16).
Little else about either of them is on record. Each death was charged separately, with two counts of murder and two counts of felony murder for each of them.
Ilija (Eli) Balovski and his brother George Balovski died in Gary on December 18, 1990 (also given as December 19). Little else about them is on record.
Peterson was arrested on January 29, 1991 (also given as January 30). He gave a statement admitting the killings on January 30, 1991, and he was brought before a magistrate that afternoon, about 36 hours after the arrest. Indiana law set a limit of 24 hours, and the Indiana Supreme Court held in 1996 that the delay did not make the statement involuntary. He later withdrew his admissions.
Charges followed in both counties. Porter County charged him on February 14, 1991, and Lake County charged him on March 1, 1991. In the Porter County case the charge sheet set out four counts: two counts of murder and two counts of felony murder for each of Harchand Dhaliwal and Marie Meitzler (Counts 1 to 4, with Counts 1 and 2 for Mr. Dhaliwal and Counts 3 and 4 for Ms. Meitzler). In the Lake County case he was charged with two counts of murder for the killing of the Balovski brothers. In all he was charged with seven killings in Lake and Porter Counties.
Lake County prosecutors tried him twice for three of the killings, and both juries acquitted him. The dates of those trials and the victims involved are not on record. The acquittals are verdicts of not guilty, and those three killings are not convictions.
The third trial took place in Porter County before Judge Thomas W. Webber of the Porter Superior Court, in cause number 64D02-9102-CF-22. An earlier attempt had ended in a mistrial after the first effort to seat a jury. On March 16, 1992, the jury convicted him of the murders of Harchand Dhaliwal and Marie Meitzler. The jury recommended a sentence of death, and the court imposed it, finding that the aggravating circumstances outweighed the mitigating ones. The aggravating circumstances found were that each killing was intentional and committed in the course of a felony, and that he had committed multiple murders.
The fourth trial took place in Lake County before Judge James L. Clement of the Lake Superior Court, in cause number 45G04-9103-CF-42. On May 4, 1992, the jury found him guilty of two counts of murder for the killing of Ilija (Eli) and George Balovski. The jury recommended against the death penalty. On June 5, 1992, Judge Clement rejected that recommendation and sentenced him to death, relying in part on the Porter County convictions of March 16, 1992, which the court counted as two aggravating circumstances, one for each victim.
The Indiana Supreme Court decided Peterson v. State on December 13, 1996 (674 N.E.2d 528; cause 45S00-9103-DP-223). Justice Dickson wrote the opinion, with Chief Justice Shepard and Justices Selby and Boehm concurring. Peterson's counsel was James F. Stanton of Crown Point.
The court rejected his challenges to the search that had produced physical evidence, holding that he had no standing under the Fourth Amendment to contest it and that, under the Indiana Constitution, the seizure was lawful. It found his arrest lawful and his statement voluntary despite the delay in bringing him before a magistrate. On the sentence, it set out what the trial court had weighed. The mitigating circumstances the trial court found were that he had no other prior criminal conduct, was under extreme emotional disturbance, came from a broken home, had graduated from high school, had served in the Marine Corps, was the father of an 11-month-old child and was 21 years old. The Supreme Court gave these low weight and called the aggravating circumstances "of the highest range." It affirmed the death sentence as appropriate.
Justice Sullivan concurred in a separate opinion. He noted that it was the eighth death sentence the court had reviewed after a unanimous jury recommendation against death, and he said that he joined the opinion because its approach was close to the standard he favored and because the court had reached consensus.
The Indiana Supreme Court decided Ben-Yisrayl v. State on December 31, 1997 (690 N.E.2d 1141; cause 64S00-9103-DP-229). Justice Dickson again wrote for the court, with Chief Justice Shepard and Justices Selby and Boehm concurring. Justice Sullivan concurred in part and in the result and agreed that the death sentence was appropriate.
Peterson raised twenty claims, which the court grouped into nine issues. His lawyers argued that the Porter County charges should have been severed, that the record was too damaged to review, that the evidence of the Balovski deaths should not have been admitted, that the prosecutor's closing remarks were improper, that the jury instructions were wrong, and that his statement and the physical evidence should have been excluded. The court rejected each claim. On the record problem, it found that he had been given the chance to have the transcript reconstructed and had raised objections only after the court declared the record complete. It held that evidence of the Balovski deaths, even if wrongly admitted, was harmless. It affirmed the judgment and the sentence.
Peterson sought post-conviction relief in both cases. On May 25, 2000, the Indiana Supreme Court, in an opinion by Chief Justice Shepard, affirmed the denial of relief in the Lake County case (Ben-Yisrayl v. State, 729 N.E.2d 102, cause 45S00-9708-PD-460). The court held that his trial lawyers had not been ineffective in keeping the trial in Lake County rather than seeking a change of venue, in the guilt-phase decisions they made, or in the penalty phase. It also held that the claim that the death sentence was improper could have been raised on direct appeal and had therefore been waived, though it considered the merits anyway.
On August 28, 2001, the court affirmed the denial of post-conviction relief in the Porter County case (Ben-Yisrayl v. State, 753 N.E.2d 649, cause 64S00-9808-PD-429). It rejected claims about the effectiveness of his lawyers at trial and on appeal, the instructions to the jury, and the adequacy of the trial record. On the record, it described how the original court reporter had stopped before finishing and how the transcript had been reconstructed with the trial judge, the prosecutor and defense counsel, and it found no material gaps.
Peterson filed a federal habeas corpus petition on the Lake County conviction on January 23, 2001. Judge Allen Sharp of the Northern District of Indiana heard argument on December 5, 2002, and denied the petition on December 27, 2002 (Ben-Yisrayl v. Davis, 245 F. Supp. 2d 960). He rejected claims that Peterson's lawyers had failed to call a witness and an expert on false confessions, that the delay in presenting him to a magistrate invalidated his statement, and that evidence had been withheld. The death sentence stood.
On the Porter County conviction, the result was different. On July 23, 2003, the same court granted the petition (277 F. Supp. 2d 898). The State appealed, and on December 13, 2005, the Seventh Circuit, in an opinion by Judge Williams, affirmed (Ben-Yisrayl v. Davis, 431 F.3d 1043). It held that the Indiana Supreme Court had unreasonably applied federal law in finding that the prosecutor's closing remarks, which invited the jury to draw an inference from his silence at trial, did not violate his Fifth Amendment privilege, and that it had unreasonably found the error harmless. The court did not reach his claim about the trial transcript. It ordered the writ granted unless Indiana retried him within 120 days. The Seventh Circuit later called those convictions "constitutionally invalid." He had not been retried on those charges by August 28, 2008. What happened to them after that date is not on record.
On May 21, 2004, in Saylor v. State (808 N.E.2d 646), the Indiana Supreme Court revised another inmate's death sentence to a term of years. The sentence in that case had been imposed in 1992 despite a unanimous jury recommendation against death. The court held that, after Indiana amended its statute in 2002 so that a jury recommendation against death would preclude a death sentence, it was not appropriate to carry out a sentence reached through the earlier procedure. A footnote named Peterson, then Obadyah Ben-Yisrayl, as one of two other inmates in the same position. His Lake County death sentence was then vacated on a new post-conviction petition. The Seventh Circuit dismissed his pending federal appeal on October 29, 2004, because he had not yet been resentenced.
On December 13, 2004, the Lake County trial court imposed two consecutive sixty-year terms for the murder of the Balovski brothers. The Indiana Court of Appeals affirmed those terms (cause 45A05-0501-CR-22). A federal district court granted habeas relief against them on May 3, 2007, on the ground that the invalidated Porter County convictions had played too great a part in the sentencing. On August 28, 2008, the Seventh Circuit, in an opinion by Judge Bauer joined by Judges Posner and Evans, reversed that grant and affirmed the denial of relief on his remaining claims, writing that habeas relief "should not have been granted." The two sixty-year terms remained in place (Ben-Yisrayl v. Buss, Nos. 07-2151 and 07-2281).
Several points are open. Some dates of the Portage and Gary killings are also given a day later. The dates, details and victims of the two Lake County trials that ended in acquittals are not on record. The date of the Porter County death sentence, the reason for his change of name and the outcome of the Porter County charges after 2008 are not on record, and neither are his present place of confinement and legal status.
December 13 and 15, 1990: Harchand Dhaliwal and Marie Meitzler are killed in Portage (the second date also given as December 16).
December 18, 1990: Ilija (Eli) and George Balovski are killed in Gary (also given as December 19).
Late January 1991: Peterson is arrested; he gives a statement on January 30, 1991.
February 14, 1991: charged in Porter County.
March 1, 1991: charged in Lake County with the murder of the Balovski brothers.
Two Lake County trials: acquitted at both, on three of the charges.
March 16, 1992: convicted in Porter Superior Court; sentenced to death on the jury's recommendation.
May 4, 1992: convicted in Lake Superior Court of two counts of murder.
June 5, 1992: sentenced to death in Lake County over the jury's recommendation against it.
December 13, 1996: Indiana Supreme Court affirms the Lake County conviction and sentence.
December 31, 1997: Indiana Supreme Court affirms the Porter County conviction and sentence.
May 25, 2000: post-conviction relief denied in the Lake County case.
August 28, 2001: post-conviction relief denied in the Porter County case.
December 27, 2002: federal court denies his Lake County petition.
July 23, 2003: federal court grants his Porter County petition.
May 21, 2004: Saylor v. State.
October 29, 2004: Seventh Circuit dismisses his appeal.
December 13, 2004: two consecutive sixty-year terms imposed in Lake County.
December 13, 2005: Seventh Circuit affirms the Porter County grant.
May 3, 2007: federal district court grants relief against the sixty-year terms.
August 28, 2008: Seventh Circuit reverses that grant; the terms stand.