A story today in the Munster Times has some interesting history on the prohibition against "judge shopping" in Indiana:
In the old days, "judge shopping" wasn't prohibited. Prosecutors who were prosecuting a high-profile murder case could pick whichever judge they felt was toughest on people accused of that crime.Posted by Marcia Oddi at April 30, 2004 12:15 PMBut Bradford said that ended several years ago when boxer Mike Tyson stood trial for rape in Indiana and his attorneys complained that the prosecution got the case assigned to a judge who was a former sexual crimes prosecutor.
The Indiana Supreme Court ordered each county to come up with a way to randomly assign cases. Porter County came up with a marble system, getting marbles made of colors like black, white and green. Marbles are now drawn randomly from a container, and the color which is drawn decides which judge receives the case.