A Marion County jury has found Rodregus Morgan guilty of murder for a second time in the 2023 shooting death of Tracy Harmon, and a judge has sentenced him to 56 years in prison — one year longer than the sentence he received after his first trial, which an appeals court later threw out. Morgan was reportedly intoxicated when he shot Harmon inside a vehicle parked on Indianapolis' Far Eastside.
The case dates back to October 23, 2023, when Harmon was shot and killed in a vehicle near 30th Street and Mitthoefer Road, as reported by Fox 59. Police pinpointed the scene more precisely as the 3000 block of Osceola Lane, between Mitthoefer Road and German Church Road, according to WTHR. Responding IMPD officers found Harmon fatally wounded in the passenger seat and Morgan passed out behind the wheel, with a handgun recovered on the floorboard near his feet, the station reported.
A witness told detectives that Morgan and Harmon had been arguing all day before the shooting, and that the witness got out of the car on Osceola Lane after seeing Morgan point a gun at Harmon, moments before hearing a gunshot, per the same WTHR account. Fox 59 reports the shooting stemmed from an argument between the two, who — according to court documents from the appellate proceedings — had known each other for decades and shared four children together.
A Conviction Undone by a Jury Room Mistake
Morgan's path to his current sentence was anything but straightforward. He was first found guilty of murder in February 2025 following a two-day jury trial, and a judge sentenced him that March to 55 years in prison, the state's advisory sentence for murder under Indiana law. But that conviction did not stand.
The Indiana Court of Appeals reversed Morgan's original murder conviction on February 25 and sent the case back for a new trial, after finding that jurors deliberating in the first trial had inadvertently been given his daughter's deposition transcript. That document contained statements about prior domestic abuse allegations that had been excluded from evidence, according to the appellate ruling. Fox 59 describes the retrial as stemming from a procedural issue identified during the appellate process.
Between his first and second trials, Morgan had also pleaded guilty in April 2025 to voluntary manslaughter under sudden heat, a Level 2 felony, according to Fox 59's reporting. That charge carries a far lighter statutory range in Indiana — 10 to 30 years, with an advisory sentence of 17.5 years — compared to the 45-to-65-year range for murder. In July 2025, however, a Marion County jury instead found Morgan guilty of murder in his second trial, resulting in the harsher sentence.
Prosecutor Points to Guns and Alcohol
Marion County Prosecutor Ryan Mears addressed the case's resolution, saying the sentence brings the criminal proceedings to a close and delivers justice for Tracy and the Harmon family, according to Fox 59. Mears added that no family should ever have to go through what the Harmon family has gone through.
Following the earlier trial, Mears also highlighted the broader danger of mixing alcohol and firearms, warning that drinking while brandishing a handgun created a disastrous situation that cost a human life, according to WTHR's reporting.
Morgan's history with Indiana's court system predates this case. In 2014, he was the subject of an Indiana Supreme Court decision, Morgan v. State, after he was arrested for sleeping in an IndyGo bus shelter; that ruling examined whether Indiana's public intoxication statute was unconstitutionally vague in criminalizing behavior deemed “annoying” while intoxicated, according to The Indiana Lawyer. With his murder conviction now upheld through a second trial, Morgan's 56-year sentence closes out a case that spanned more than two and a half years and two full jury trials.
