What this is, and what it isn’t
Honesty about limits is part of the lesson, so here they are.
Purpose
Exploratory Project. This site teaches a method: how judicial educators, and the people who help them prepare, can use AI to gather information, organize it, display it, and turn it into handouts and presentations, while checking the work. The court-opinion project is a worked example so you can see every step on real material.
What the example data is
- Screening-grade. The 176 opinions (142 criminal, 24 civil and 10 juvenile) were found by ranked searches and sorted by AI, run on full-text opinions from July 1, 2025 to June 30, 2026. The counts are directional, not a census.
- What has been checked. AI-assisted screening, then a primary-source audit by AI agents (all eight reversals, 12 random criminal opinions and 14 other opinions checked against the court’s own documents); no person has yet read every record. Twelve AI agents carried out the audit on October 23, 2026 by opening the court’s own opinions, and the errors they found were corrected. The other records remain screening-grade.
- Not a risk rate. The share of opinions reversed (8 of 176, 4.5%, with a 95% Wilson score interval of 2.3% to 8.7%) describes these 176 opinions, not the chance that any trial ruling is reversed.
- What “reversed” means. An evidence ruling contributed to reversal, in whole or in part. At least eight other opinions were reversed in part on non-evidence grounds, such as double jeopardy, fees or credit time, and are not counted.
- Rules are matched from the coded issue, not from reading each opinion. A case may cite other rules too. Family counts use first-match placement, while rule pages count every citing opinion (so Rule 404 shows 36 on the heat map’s family view and 37 on its page).
- Partly coded quarter. July to September 2025 records (49 opinions) have placeholder preservation, notes and review-standard fields. Dates for July to December 2025 are month-level only, except for three reversals whose exact dates were confirmed against the court’s documents (exact decision dates are shown for January to June 2026). All 8 reversals found fall in the 127 fully coded records (6.3%, 95% Wilson score interval 3.2% to 11.9%); the lightly coded quarter has none, so the headline may be understated.
- Reporter citations are unverified. The N.E.3d citations shown on the heat map and rule pages were supplied with the table. None has been checked against a primary source, and some strings are shared by different cases. Lead with the docket number, the date and the court’s own link.
How the outcomes are coded
- Affirmed, no error no_error
- The court held the evidence ruling proper. Where a court held the ruling proper and added an alternative “even if error, harmless” holding, the case is coded by the primary holding, so it stays here.
- Error, harmless error_but_harmless
- The court found error, or assumed error without deciding it, and held that it did not matter to the result.
- Raised, not reached raised_not_reached
- The evidence issue was raised on appeal but the court did not decide it, including issues held waived or unpreserved.
- Error, reversible reversible
- An evidence ruling contributed to reversal in whole or in part. This is the “reversed” in the headline count of 8.
Sources
- Opinion links go to the court’s own published documents. The site doesn’t host or copy them.
- The rule pages reproduce the Indiana Rules of Evidence for browsing. Rule text as supplied, including the amendment to Rule 103(b) effective July 1, 2026 (Order, Cause No. 26S-MS-8); other rules carry their own effective dates. Three rule texts that had been cut short (Rules 402, 604 and 801(c)) were restored in October 2026, and the 63 rules were then compared with the official site. This is an unofficial copy: check the official text before relying on any rule.
Rights and reuse
I, Danielle M. Teagarden, dedicate the original text, compiled data, handouts and slides on this site to the public domain under CC0 1.0 Universal. You may copy, change, translate and redistribute them for any purpose, with no permission and no credit required, though a link back is appreciated.
Some of this material was drafted with AI assistance. Whether AI-generated text can be copyrighted is unsettled, and the dedication applies to whatever rights exist.
The dedication does not cover (1) the Indiana appellate opinions and the Indiana Rules of Evidence, which are published by the Indiana courts and which this site links to or reproduces for convenience, (2) the fonts used on this site and in the handouts (TeX Gyre Schola, Public Sans and Linwood, which is a renamed copy of Coelacanth; see its notice), which keep their own licences, or (3) any third-party material, whose rights I have not cleared. This site is not affiliated with or endorsed by any court.
Provided as is, with no warranty.
Not legal advice
Not legal advice, and not an official statement of any court or organization. This is an Exploratory Project by Danielle M. Teagarden, and the views are the author’s own. It is teaching material: read the opinion, the current rule and your own judicial ethics guidance before relying on any of it.
Contact
Write to hello@danielleteagarden.com. Please do not send confidential information or details of a legal matter; I cannot give legal advice or take on your matter.
Privacy and accessibility
- No accounts, cookies, analytics or tracking, and no outside fonts or scripts. The fonts are served from this site with their licences beside them.
- The heat map works with a keyboard (Tab, arrow keys, Enter, Esc) and has a plain table view. Press / anywhere to search.
- Marks differ by shape as well as color. Motion respects your system’s “reduce motion” setting. The site follows your device’s light or dark setting.