INDIANAPOLIS – Former Indiana Attorney General Curtis Hill will stand trial before a jury next week, following two years of delays and nearly seven years since he allegedly groped a lawmaker and three staffers at a party.
At a final pre-trial conference Tuesday, counsel representing the four plaintiffs asked Marion Superior Court Judge Patrick Dietrick to delay proceedings. The judge declined.
Instead, Dietrick gave preliminary instructions. He led both sides’ lawyers through the upcoming jury selection process, detailed his approach to direct examination, and outlined a rough schedule for the five-day civil battery trial.
It’s set to run Monday through Friday. Dietrick said he hoped to have the jury seated by lunchtime Monday so that counsel could give opening statements that afternoon.
Plaintiffs Niki DaSilva, Samantha Lozano, Gabrielle McLemore, and former Rep. Maria Candelaria Reardon accused then-Attorney General Hill of unwanted touching during a bar gathering celebrating the legislative session’s end in the early hours of March 15, 2018.
He has consistently denied the allegations, calling them “false” and “vicious.”
A special prosecutor was assigned to the case and chose not to bring criminal charges. But the Indiana Supreme Court found in 2020, after a disciplinary commission complaint, that Hill had committed criminal battery. It suspended his law license for 30 days.
He was scheduled to go on trial in April, but Dietrick vacated jury proceedings five days ahead of time. The trial was delayed several times in the two years prior.
Read the entire Leslie Bonilla Muñiz story for the Indiana Capital Chronicle, here.
