Two very different federal dockets run through the Southern District of Indiana at the same time. In Indianapolis, the court sentenced 352 people in fiscal year 2024 — nearly half in drug-trafficking cases, with an unusually heavy share of robbery prosecutions. West of the capital, the Terre Haute Federal Correctional Complex holds the federal government’s death-sentenced prisoners, giving this court a prisoner-litigation docket few districts ever see. A charge, an appeal, or a habeas petition here calls for counsel fluent in both worlds.
Below we walk through the four staffed courthouses, the bench, the prosecutors and what they actually charge, the Terre Haute prison docket, and Erlinger v. United States — the Supreme Court sentencing decision this district produced in 2024. We know this court firsthand: Elizabeth Franklin-Best has previously been admitted pro hac vice in the Southern District of Indiana. Over a career spanning more than 330 federal proceedings and in excess of 100 appeals in all twelve federal circuits and the U.S. Supreme Court, she has built the kind of trial-to-certiorari record this two-track district rewards. Best Lawyers in America selected her as a 2026 “Best Lawyer” for Appellate Practice, and Chambers USA ranks her for Litigation: White-Collar Crime & Government Investigations in its 2026 guide. This page belongs to our federal courts directory.
Under federal investigation in Indianapolis, Evansville, Terre Haute, or New Albany — or fighting a conviction that came out of those courtrooms? A paid, one-hour initial consultation gets you a candid, experienced read on where the case stands.
Table of Contents
Quick Answer: Southern District of Indiana
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| What does the Southern District of Indiana cover? | The 60 southern Indiana counties, divided by 28 U.S.C. § 94(b) into the Indianapolis, Terre Haute, Evansville, and New Albany Divisions. |
| Which courthouses are staffed? | Indianapolis (Birch Bayh Federal Building), Terre Haute, Evansville, and New Albany each have a working clerk’s office; Richmond appears in the statute but has no staffed office. |
| Who is the chief judge? | Chief Judge James R. Sweeney II, who assumed the role on July 11, 2025, leading five active district judges and three senior judges (as of mid-2026). |
| Who prosecutes federal cases? | The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Indiana under U.S. Attorney Thomas E. Wheeler II, confirmed by the Senate on December 18, 2025. |
| What fills the docket? | Drug trafficking led FY2024 sentencings at 46.3 percent, with robbery (9.7 percent) and firearms (14.8 percent) well above typical district shares. |
| Why does Terre Haute matter? | The Terre Haute Federal Correctional Complex includes USP Terre Haute, where the federal government houses death-sentenced prisoners — and prisoners confined there file § 2241 habeas petitions in this district. |
| Which circuit hears appeals? | The Seventh Circuit. This district sent Erlinger v. United States, the 2024 ACCA jury-right decision, up that ladder. |
| Has the firm appeared in this court? | Yes — Elizabeth Franklin-Best has prior pro hac vice admission here, and a paid, one-hour initial consultation opens every new matter. |
Key Takeaways
- Sixty counties, four divisions: 28 U.S.C. § 94(b) assigns southern Indiana to courthouses in Indianapolis, Terre Haute, Evansville, and New Albany.
- Five active district judges (Chief Judge James R. Sweeney II since July 11, 2025) and three senior judges staff the court, with criminal duty spread across all four divisions.
- Drug trafficking drove 46.3 percent of the district’s 352 FY2024 sentencings — far above the 29.5 percent national share — and robbery cases ran at triple the typical district weight.
- U.S. Attorney Thomas E. Wheeler II, Senate-confirmed December 18, 2025, leads the prosecuting office from Indianapolis.
- Erlinger v. United States, 602 U.S. 821 (2024), holding that a jury must find ACCA’s different-occasions element, started as a Southern District of Indiana prosecution.
- USP Terre Haute, the high-security penitentiary in the Terre Haute Federal Correctional Complex, houses federal death-sentenced prisoners, and federal executions are carried out there.
- Prisoners confined at Terre Haute file habeas petitions under 28 U.S.C. § 2241 in this district, while § 2255 motions return to whichever district imposed the sentence.
- The 14-day criminal appeal window of Rule 4(b) starts at entry of judgment — the Seventh Circuit deadline that disciplines every sentencing here.
- Elizabeth Franklin-Best has already practiced in this court through pro hac vice admission, experience we bring to every new Southern District of Indiana engagement.
The Southern District of Indiana at a Glance
The United States District Court for the Southern District of Indiana takes in the lower 60 of Indiana’s 92 counties. Under 28 U.S.C. § 94(b), those counties are grouped into four divisions: Indianapolis — the largest, covering Marion County and its ring — plus Terre Haute, Evansville, and New Albany, the river town directly across from Louisville. The statute also names Richmond as a place of holding court in the Indianapolis Division, but the court’s staffed clerk’s offices are the four division seats.
Indianapolis dominates the criminal docket the way Marion County dominates the state’s population, but the outlying divisions are not afterthoughts: Evansville carries a steady drug and firearms calendar, New Albany absorbs cases from the Louisville metro’s Indiana side, and Terre Haute pairs its courthouse with the federal prison complex outside town. Prosecution everywhere in the district belongs to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Indiana, and review of every judgment belongs to the Seventh Circuit.
Practice in this court runs on more than the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure. The district maintains its own local rules and a Uniform Case Management Plan adopted by every judge, and the Seventh Circuit’s Standards of Professional Conduct apply in each courtroom — details posted on the court’s own site that out-of-district counsel are expected to know cold before the first appearance.
A Five-Judge Court Anchored in Indianapolis
The district’s five authorized judgeships under 28 U.S.C. § 133 are all filled as of mid-2026: Chief Judge James R. Sweeney II — who assumed the center seat on July 11, 2025 — together with Judges Tanya Walton Pratt, James Patrick Hanlon, Matthew P. Brookman, and Justin R. Olson. Senior Judges Sarah Evans Barker, Richard L. Young, and Jane E. Magnus-Stinson continue to take civil and criminal cases, and the Indianapolis magistrate bench — including Judges Tim A. Baker, Mark J. Dinsmore, Mario Garcia, and Kellie M. Barr — handles the early stages of most felony prosecutions.
The court publishes a division-by-division duty map that repays study. Every judge sits in Indianapolis, but Evansville criminal cases fall to Senior Judge Young and Judge Brookman, New Albany draws Senior Judge Barker and Judge Pratt, and the Terre Haute calendar circulates among five judges. Where a charge is venued therefore tells you a great deal about who will decide the suppression motion and impose any sentence.
We treat that information as preparation, not prophecy. No lawyer can promise how a particular judge will rule, and we never do — but knowing a judge’s published procedures, plea-colloquy habits, and sentencing patterns shapes how we frame motions and present mitigation in this district.
Terre Haute: The Federal Prison Docket and § 2241
The Federal Correctional Complex outside Terre Haute is, in clinical terms, two institutions under one complex designation in Bureau of Prisons records: USP Terre Haute, a high-security penitentiary, and FCI Terre Haute, a medium-security facility. The penitentiary houses the federal government’s death-sentenced prisoners, and the Department of Justice has carried out federal executions there. That fact alone gives this district a body of capital and post-conviction litigation that almost no other federal trial court handles.
It also matters for ordinary federal prisoners. A habeas petition under 28 U.S.C. § 2241 — the vehicle for challenging how a sentence is being executed, such as credit calculations or certain detention issues — must be filed in the district of confinement. For everyone held at the Terre Haute complex, that district is this one. The Supreme Court’s decision in Jones v. Hendrix, 599 U.S. 465 (2023), sharply narrowed the use of § 2241 as a substitute for a second § 2255 motion, so choosing the right vehicle — and the right district — is now an unforgiving threshold question we analyze before filing anything.
The prison’s presence shows up on the criminal side too: the district’s FY2024 sentencings include prison-offense cases that arise inside the complex itself, and prosecutions of conduct behind the walls are a recurring feature of the Terre Haute Division calendar.
What Prosecutors Charge in the Southern District of Indiana
As of mid-2026, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Indiana is led by Thomas E. Wheeler II, who was nominated in June 2025, confirmed by the Senate on December 18, 2025, and sworn in as the confirmed U.S. Attorney on March 11, 2026 after serving as interim U.S. Attorney; he directs roughly 45 Assistant U.S. Attorneys. The office’s recent charging activity, published on its own site, leans hard into violent crime and racketeering: a May 2026 federal RICO indictment named twelve alleged members of Indianapolis’s “Crown Hill Enterprise,” with charges that include murder — allegations the defendants are presumed innocent of unless proven. Alongside the gang docket sit police-misconduct prosecutions, child-exploitation cases, and drug-and-firearm sentencings out of Evansville, while the office’s standing case pages still track major fraud matters such as United States v. Durham.
The U.S. Sentencing Commission’s FY2024 packet quantifies the mix. Of 352 people sentenced, drug trafficking accounted for 163 — 46.3 percent, against a 29.5 percent national share. Robbery, at 34 cases and 9.7 percent, ran far above its weight in most districts, a signature of Indianapolis Hobbs Act enforcement. Firearms followed at 52 (14.8 percent), fraud, theft, and embezzlement at 30 (8.5 percent), and money laundering at 15 (4.3 percent). Guilty pleas resolved 96.6 percent of cases; twelve went to trial.
For the defense, those numbers translate into priorities: in a drug-heavy district, the decisive fights are often charging-stage fights — mandatory-minimum exposure, § 851 enhancements, safety-valve eligibility — and they are best fought before the indictment locks the framework in place. The Indianapolis corporate and health-care economy, home to major pharmaceutical and insurance employers, also keeps a steady channel of fraud and white-collar investigations moving through the same courthouse.
Federal Criminal Cases in the District
From drug conspiracies and firearms counts to white-collar investigations and fraud indictments, the procedural spine of a Southern District of Indiana case is the same — what differs is where the leverage points sit, and they arrive early.
Most cases begin with an investigation by a federal agency, sometimes signaled by a target letter or a grand jury subpoena. Formal charges follow, typically by indictment. After an initial appearance and arraignment, the case proceeds through pretrial litigation and discovery, and is then resolved either by a negotiated plea agreement or by trial. A conviction is followed by sentencing under the federal framework. The firm’s federal criminal process hub walks through each stage in detail.
At every step we are doing two jobs at once: contesting the government’s case in the district court and preserving the issues an appellate court could later need. Erlinger made that point emphatically for this district — constitutional sentencing objections raised here can end up restructuring federal law. We litigate as though the case in front of us might be the next one to do so.
Applied Insight: In a district where nearly half of all sentencings are drug cases, the most consequential decisions are usually made in the U.S. Attorney’s charging memo, not the courtroom — which statute, what drug weight, whether a § 851 prior is filed. Counsel retained during the investigation can sometimes influence those choices; counsel retained at arraignment inherits them.
Appeals and Post-Conviction Matters
This district has recently shown how far a preserved sentencing issue can travel. In Erlinger v. United States, 602 U.S. 821 (2024), the Supreme Court held that when the Armed Career Criminal Act’s 15-year minimum turns on whether prior offenses were committed on different occasions, the Fifth and Sixth Amendments require a unanimous jury — not a judge — to decide that question beyond a reasonable doubt. The defendant who won that rule was sentenced in this courthouse. Direct appeals from the district go to the Seventh Circuit, and the criminal notice of appeal is due a brisk fourteen days after judgment enters.
Collateral litigation follows two tracks here, and the Terre Haute complex makes both busy. A motion attacking the conviction or sentence under § 2255 is filed in the sentencing district through the channels described in our federal post-conviction relief guide; a § 2241 petition contesting the execution of a sentence is filed where the prisoner is confined — for Terre Haute prisoners, right here. We also pursue compassionate release in this district, mindful that Seventh Circuit law confines § 3582(c)(1)(A) to genuinely extraordinary circumstances rather than disagreements with sentence length. Those motions are steep climbs statistically: in fiscal year 2025 the Seventh Circuit granted only 8.1 percent of compassionate-release motions (14 of 173) and the Southern District of Indiana granted 2 of 31, according to the U.S. Sentencing Commission, which is why a motion here has to be documented to the hilt. Because this work runs on the record and on national law, our appellate-focused practice handles it in the Southern District of Indiana as readily as anywhere.
How the Firm Practices in This Court
This is not a court we would be visiting for the first time. Elizabeth Franklin-Best has previously been admitted pro hac vice in the Southern District of Indiana, which means our familiarity with its judges’ procedures, its Uniform Case Management Plan, and its courthouse logistics comes from actual appearances rather than a directory listing.
Renewing that admission for a new case is routine — pro hac vice exists precisely so that defendants can hire the federal practitioner who fits the case, wherever that lawyer’s office sits. The substantive law at issue in an Indianapolis fraud trial, a Terre Haute § 2241 petition, or an Evansville drug sentencing is federal through and through, governed by the same code, rules, and Seventh Circuit decisions we work with daily.
Elizabeth Franklin-Best is admitted to practice before the U.S. Supreme Court and every federal circuit, and she wrote the book on overturning convictions — literally, Reversing Your Criminal Conviction. Clients with matters north of Indianapolis can start with our Northern District of Indiana guide; those across the river in Louisville’s federal court will want our Western District of Kentucky page.
Frequently Asked Questions
What area does the Southern District of Indiana cover?
The district covers the 60 southern counties of Indiana under 28 U.S.C. § 94(b), organized into four divisions seated at Indianapolis, Terre Haute, Evansville, and New Albany. Marion County and the Indianapolis metropolitan area generate the largest share of its cases.
Who prosecutes federal crimes in the Southern District of Indiana?
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Indiana, based in Indianapolis with an Evansville branch. As of mid-2026 the office is led by U.S. Attorney Thomas E. Wheeler II, confirmed by the Senate on December 18, 2025, and its recent docket emphasizes violent-crime and RICO prosecutions, drug trafficking, child-exploitation cases, and fraud.
Who are the federal judges in the Southern District of Indiana?
As of mid-2026 the active bench is Chief Judge James R. Sweeney II and Judges Tanya Walton Pratt, James Patrick Hanlon, Matthew P. Brookman, and Justin R. Olson, joined by Senior Judges Sarah Evans Barker, Richard L. Young, and Jane E. Magnus-Stinson. All are based in Indianapolis, with criminal duty rotating through the Terre Haute, Evansville, and New Albany Divisions.
Is federal death row located in Terre Haute, Indiana?
Yes. USP Terre Haute, the high-security penitentiary within the Terre Haute Federal Correctional Complex, houses the federal government’s death-sentenced prisoners, and federal executions are carried out there. Because the complex sits inside this district, related habeas and conditions litigation is filed in the Southern District of Indiana.
What was Erlinger v. United States?
Erlinger v. United States, 602 U.S. 821 (2024), holds that when an Armed Career Criminal Act sentence depends on whether prior offenses occurred on occasions different from one another, a unanimous jury must decide that question beyond a reasonable doubt. The case arose from a Southern District of Indiana prosecution, and it gives defendants facing ACCA’s 15-year minimum an important jury-trial protection.
Which appeals court covers the Southern District of Indiana?
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in Chicago, which also hears appeals from the Northern District of Indiana and the federal courts of Illinois and Wisconsin. Criminal defendants generally have 14 days from entry of judgment to file the notice of appeal.
How does a federal criminal case proceed in the Southern District of Indiana?
The sequence runs investigation, charge (usually by grand jury indictment), initial appearance and arraignment — typically before an Indianapolis magistrate judge — then pretrial motions, discovery, and either a plea agreement or trial, with Guidelines sentencing after any conviction. In FY2024, 96.6 percent of the district’s cases ended in guilty pleas and twelve were tried.
Has the firm appeared in the Southern District of Indiana?
Yes. Elizabeth Franklin-Best has previously been admitted pro hac vice in this court, so our experience here comes from real appearances. Securing admission for a new case is a routine filing we complete at the start of the engagement.
Does the firm handle federal cases in the Southern District of Indiana?
We handle trial-level defense, Seventh Circuit appeals, § 2255 motions, § 2241 petitions for Terre Haute prisoners, and compassionate-release litigation throughout the district. The first step for any of them is the same: a paid, one-hour initial consultation in which we assess the record and lay out realistic options.
Talk With a Federal Criminal Defense Lawyer
A federal charge in Indianapolis, a sentencing in Evansville, a § 2241 question from Terre Haute, an appeal that has to be noticed within fourteen days — each is a problem we have worked before, in this very court. Reserve a paid, one-hour initial consultation and we will tell you plainly what we see and what we would do about it.