Joseph Trueblood

 

This case, like the last, involves an individual who was sentenced to death in Indiana. However, this case is very different from the previous one in many ways. I also found a lot of misinformation and confusion with this case when doing my research that I had to figure out. I find this case interesting in part because it is a case in which the defendant pleaded guilty, apparently without any sort of plea deal offered by the state. Now, doing is not unusual if the defendant is adamant, as some are, that they are guilty and either feel they deserve the death penalty or they claim they would rather be executed than spend the rest of their life in prison. Neither seems to be the case here with Trueblood although he claims that at least with the first guilty plea (he did this twice at separate times) he did so on the advice of his attorney saying that he would avoid the death penalty.

Now, prosecutors will quite often offer plea deals to defendants to avoid a trial. In my opinion, when the death penalty is involved if death is not “off the table” with the plea there is absolutely no reason to accept a plea unless you are okay with the idea of being executed. In this case it appears that Trueblood did not take a deal offered by the prosecutors but simply changed his plea to guilty. It is entirely possible I suppose that Trueblood's attorney told him if he pleaded guilty he would not receive a death sentence but I believe it is more likely that he was told that he may have a better chance of avoiding a death sentence but that there were no guarantees.

Before I get deep into this story I want to clarify some things that were confusing in my research. The victims in this case were Susan Bowsher and her two children, two-year old Ashlyn and seventeen month old William. First, Susan's age within the research seemed to change between twenty-two and twenty-three when in reality she was actually twenty-one based on the dates on her tombstone. Secondly, I want to address the names themselves. Some research shows all of the victims carrying the last name of Bowsher, which initially made me believe was Susan's married now. Bowsher is actually Susan's maiden name and while oddly William shares that surname, Ashlyn's surname was Hughes, the surname of Susan's “ex-husband” Robert Ray Hughes. I put the phrase in quotes because while he was always referred to as her ex-husband I am unsure that they were actually divorced, although they were apparently not together by mid-1988. The couple married in 1985 and according to the findagrave.com website both of the children belonged to Susan and Robert so I am a bit confused as to why they did not both share his last name. I was able to determine this through a picture of the tombstone in which Susan shares with her children.

As I stated above, Susan and Robert Hughes were married in 1985 but by August of 1988 Susan was dating local Lafayette Indiana taxi driver, Joseph Trueblood. I cannot determine when they began dating but there were also references that they lived together along with Susan's children. On August 15^th Trueblood picked up Susan and her children either in his own car or his taxi cab. Some reports say she was already his “ex-girlfriend” while others still indicated that they lived together at this time. It was said that Susan had “expressed her intention of going back to her ex-husband.” Investigators, and later prosecutors, would say this angered Trueblood and that he opened fire inside the car murdering Susan and her children. Ultimately Susan would have three gunshot wounds to the head while the children each had one gunshot wound to their heads.

I was not able to determine how the bodies were found or even how or when Joseph Trueblood was arrested and charged with their murders. What I can say is that his twin brother, William, apparently told investigators and later the court that apparently after shooting the victims Trueblood came to his home, told him what he had done and borrowed a shovel. It was said that he then took the three bodies to a “secluded area” and buried them in “three shallow graves.”

Less than two months after the murders, on October 6, 1988 Trueblood pleaded guilty in the murder of Susan Bowsher. It was said that more than a year later he attempted to withdraw his guilty plea but I can only assume that was after he had been sentenced to death but that is not completely clear. As I stated earlier Trueblood would claim that he only pleaded guilty because his attorney advised him that he would not receive the death penalty. The courts refused to allow him to withdraw the guilty plea. I am unsure if the reasoning behind that had to do with the length of time it took for that filing to be made, or if they simply ruled that he had been well informed and were refusing to allow him to take back his plea.

In February of 1990 Trueblood's trial in the murders of Susan's children, Ashlyn Hughes and William Bowsher began. After two days of testimony from four witnesses against him the trial was stopped and once again Trueblood pleaded guilty. A few days after entering that plea he once again tried to take back the plea but again that was denied by the courts. On April 12, 1990 he was once again (or maybe it was all together) sentenced to death. The aggravating factors considered was that he had murdered victims less than twelve years of age and had committed three murders.

Interestingly in the mitigating factors “extreme emotional disturbance” was listed. I spoke about this in the last blog that I wrote, about Arthur Paul Baird Jr., and believed that this was proven in the court as it was discussed often and was one of the factor in which Baird was granted clemency by the then governor. However, I found nothing deeply discussed. I found one reference that stated he “had an abusive childhood” and “had suffered brain damage from several strokes” but I have no other information about these things. I cannot even say when the strokes occurred and if they had any impact on his crime. Another notation in his mitigating factors said “mixed personality disorder,” something I have not heard of before. There were other things mentioned too but I will not go into those.

I do believe that one of the things that may have pushed the judge to sentence Trueblood to death was a “pre-sentencing report.” Now, I have only heard of these in federal cases but it was mentioned in this one, despite it being a state case, so apparently they are done in these cases too. In the pre-sentencing report Trueblood claimed that Susan was upset and suicidal and she had pulled out a gun. He claimed that Susan had shot Ashlyn and while he was driving he began to wrestle the gun from her and it went off two more times with the second bullet hitting William. He then claimed that Susan shot herself in the head twice and that in an act of “mercy” he shot her the third time to put her out of her misery. Aside from the fact that it appears no one seemed to believe that Susan would have intentionally shot her child or threaten suicide, the fact that she allegedly shot herself in the head twice seemed completely unreasonable. I am sure that this “story” came about since he had so quickly pleaded guilty in Susan's murder, likely to avoid the death penalty and when that did not go in his favor he had to come up with what he thought to be a plausible story.

An interesting thing about Trueblood's appeals is that although they failed there was a good point made in one of them. The governor at the time was Frank O'Bannon and he denied Trueblood clemency. I was unaware that an inmate could appeal a clemency decision but apparently that is what Trueblood, likely through his attorney, did. It was appealed to the Indiana Supreme Court saying that O'Bannon “didn't follow proper procedures in the clemency, by not considering certain evidence.” The court ruled that this basically did not matter as they responded “the exclusive power to grant clemency rests with the governor.” In my blog about Arthur Baird Jr. I went into great detail about what Mitch Daniels, the governor at the time of his clemency request, stated about his reasons in granting clemency. I believe Daniels' wording in his request to grant Baird clemency was an attempt to prevent future backlash when he would likely deny clemency to someone else. Trueblood's case came before the governor prior to Daniels so the Supreme Court ruling had already been issued in which they stated basically it was solely up to the governor and for whatever reason they chose.

Joseph Trueblood was executed by lethal injection on June 12, 2003 at the age of forty-six. In an act of “defiance” of sorts he refused a last meal and also had filed with the courts to prevent an autopsy being done after his death. Apparently it is customary that an autopsy takes place and at the time those in charge stated they had never had an inmate make this refusal. According to Trueblood, or at least through his attorney, it was his stance that he was an innocent man being put to death and that once the state was done “killing” him they were no longer in charge of what happened to his body. He stated that his family intended to claim his body. I cannot say for sure what the ruling ended up being on the autopsy but it does appear that someone claimed his body. Trueblood's mother died in 1992 and his father passed just a few weeks before his execution on May 27^th. Trueblood's body was taken back to the Lafayette area and buried in a cemetery but strangely it was not the same cemetery as his parent, nor two of his siblings that have since passed away.