Jason Hubbell Case: Suppressed Evidence, Overstreet Link, 2025 Ruling

The Jason Hubbell case is an Indiana wrongful-conviction matter in which a Bartholomew County judge vacated Hubbell’s 1999 murder and criminal confinement convictions on September 12, 2025, after finding that police and prosecutors had suppressed extensive evidence tying a different man — death-row inmate Michael Dean Overstreet — to the 1997 killing of Sharon Myers. Hubbell had served more than 25 years of a 75-year sentence. He remains in jail while the state appeals the ruling.

The 1997 Murder and Hubbell’s 1999 Conviction

Sharon Myers disappeared in May 1997 after leaving her job at the Arvin Industries plant in Columbus, Indiana. A witness reported seeing a white van in the plant’s parking lot around the time she vanished, and a man was seen approaching her. Her skeletal remains were found on November 2, 1997, at the Atterbury Fish and Wildlife Area in Johnson County.¹ She had been strangled with ligatures made from her own clothing.²

Columbus Police Department lead detective Dennis Knulf focused the investigation on Jason Hubbell, who owned a white van. In 1999, a Bartholomew County Circuit Court jury convicted Hubbell of murder and criminal confinement. He received 65 years for the murder and 10 years for the confinement charge, to be served consecutively.³

The case against him was circumstantial. No DNA, fingerprints, blood, or hair connected Hubbell to the crime.⁴ Prosecutors leaned on the white-van sighting, fiber and grass comparisons, an eyewitness identification the Indiana Supreme Court later called the product of an “unduly suggestive” single-person lineup, ambiguous post-polygraph remarks in which Hubbell said “it might be possible but he can’t say that he did it” and referenced memory “episodes,” and testimony from a jailhouse informant who claimed Hubbell had confessed while in custody.³

On direct appeal in 2001, the Indiana Supreme Court agreed the lineup was suggestive and that admitting an unrelated handgun had been an abuse of discretion, but ruled the errors harmless and affirmed the sentence.³

The Evidence Pointing to Michael Dean Overstreet

What broke the case open decades later was a parallel murder. Michael Dean Overstreet was convicted and sentenced to death for the September 1997 killing of 18-year-old Kelly Eckart, whose murder tracked the Myers case with striking closeness. Eckart was abducted from her workplace, taken in a white van, had her shoes removed, was strangled with improvised ligatures made from a shoestring and a bib-overalls strap, and was left near Camp Atterbury — the same wildlife preserve where Myers was found. DNA evidence and testimony from Overstreet’s own brother, who said Overstreet had told him he “taken a girl,” secured the conviction.⁵

The judge who later vacated Hubbell’s conviction described the overlaps between the two crimes as “stunning similarities.”⁶

But the connection to Myers went beyond pattern. Investigators possessed direct evidence tying Overstreet to her disappearance, none of which reached Hubbell’s defense:

Overstreet’s ex-wife, Melissa Holland, told police that on the morning Myers vanished, Overstreet left before sunrise in his brother Scott’s white cargo van, saying he was going to the Arvin plant in Columbus to “job hunt.” He came home that evening covered in blood, said he had been in a bar fight, and asked her to wash his clothes.⁶
Overstreet reportedly mentioned having an affair with a woman named “Sharon” in Columbus. A witness, John Mascoe, told investigators he had seen Overstreet arguing with Sharon Myers at a boat ramp near an Atterbury lake in May 1997.⁷
Another witness, Glenn Allee, said he watched Overstreet tap on a missing-persons photo of Myers “with a sick grin on his face” and comment on the specific location where her body was later found.⁶
The Franklin Police Department passed information linking Overstreet to the Myers abduction to Columbus police. John Borges, the task force commander on the Eckart case, confirmed the transfer. Hubbell’s attorneys were never told.⁶
Overstreet had collected newspaper clippings about both the Myers and Eckart abductions.⁶

What the Lead Detective Did

At Hubbell’s 1999 trial, Detective Knulf testified there was no information connecting Overstreet to the crime. The post-conviction court found that testimony misleading and ruled that Knulf had “intentionally failed to truthfully inform” the defense about the Overstreet leads. The court also found he had “intentionally deleted” exculpatory material from his investigative notes, driven by what the judge called “tunnel vision” focused on Hubbell alone.²

During the February 2025 evidentiary hearing, Knulf acknowledged that he had left evidence implicating Overstreet out of the case file because of his singular focus on Hubbell. Overstreet, deposed in the same proceeding, invoked his Fifth Amendment right when questioned about the Myers murder.⁴

The September 2025 Ruling

On September 12, 2025, Bartholomew County Circuit Court Judge Kelly S. Benjamin issued an 83-page order vacating Hubbell’s murder and criminal confinement convictions and granting him a new trial. She found that the state had committed Brady violations — the constitutional duty to disclose material favorable to the defense — by withholding “overwhelming” exculpatory evidence tying Overstreet to the killing.⁶

Benjamin wrote that “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.” Had the material been turned over, the court concluded, the defense could have offered Overstreet as an alternative suspect and challenged the integrity of the police investigation, arguments the jury never heard.⁴

Hubbell had been represented for the post-conviction fight by the Exoneration Justice Clinic at the University of Notre Dame Law School, which took the case pro bono in October 2022. Staff attorney Kevin Murphy led a team that included faculty director Jimmy Gurulé, attorney Lenora Popken, adjunct professor Elliot Slosar, investigator Christian Sheckler, and 14 current and former law students.²

Why Hubbell Is Still in Jail

Bartholomew County Prosecutor Lindsey Holden-Kay opposed the ruling and appealed. Her office argued that the suppressed material “did not meet the legal threshold required to overturn a conviction” and would have been “unlikely to have led to a different result at trial,” describing much of it as inadmissible hearsay.⁸

On October 2, 2025, Judge Benjamin granted the state’s motion for a stay, freezing the case during the appeal. Hubbell was denied both bond and release on his own recognizance. Murphy argued that keeping a man locked up after 27 years while the appeal ran was unjust; the court accepted the prosecution’s position that a stay was needed to “preserve the status quo.” Hubbell was being held at the Bartholomew County Jail as of the October hearing.⁹

The Bartholomew County Prosecutor’s Office filed its appeal with the Indiana Court of Appeals in October 2025. As of late February 2026, the appellate court had given prosecutors until February 27 to file a brief laying out the basis for the challenge, and no new rulings had issued beyond the September 2025 order.¹⁰

Overstreet’s Status

Michael Dean Overstreet remains on Indiana’s death row for the murder of Kelly Eckart. He has not been charged or indicted in the killing of Sharon Myers.¹¹ Through Hubbell’s original trial and every stage of the post-conviction litigation, the state “steadfastly denied any connection” between Overstreet and the Myers murder, a stance the prosecutor’s office kept even as the evidence developed at the 2025 hearing accumulated.¹²

1
Chicago Tribune. Man Convicted of 1997 Slaying
2
Notre Dame Law School. Exoneration Justice Clinic Victory: Jason Hubbell’s 1999 Murder Conviction Is Vacated
3
FindLaw. Hubbell v. State
4
Courthouse News Service. Notre Dame Exoneration Clinic Notches Third Victory in 15 Months
5
Justia. Overstreet v. State
6
The Republic. Judge Vacates Hubbell Convictions for Murder and Confinement and Grants Defendant New Trial
7
Notre Dame Law School. Order Granting Hubbell PCR
8
The Republic. Prosecution Reveals Holes in Hubbell Appeal
9
The Republic. Judge Grants Stay in Hubbell Case, No Release or Bond While Case Is Under Appeal
10
Daily Journal. Deadline Approaches in Hubbell Appeal
11
Indianapolis Star. Michael Overstreet, Kelly Eckart, Jason Hubbell, Sharon Myers
12
GovInfo. Hubbell v. Warden, U.S. District Court Filing