INDIANAPOLIS (AP): The state Court of Appeals has upheld a northern Indiana judge's decision to allow videotaped statements from a dead witness to be used in an upcoming murder trial.
 
The court denied without comment an appeal filed by Dontaye Singletary's attorney. Singletary is scheduled to stand trial in January on murder and other charges in the November 2012 fatal shooting of 72-year-old Carl Griffith Sr., outside his Portage home. Authorities say Singletary was hired to kill Griffith.
 
The Times of Munster reports that a former jail cellmate of Singletary told a Porter Superior Court judge in April that Singletary had indicated to him that he had the witness in question killed.
 
That witness, 34-year-old Antoinetta Johnson of Hammond, was shot to death in December 2012 in her Gary beauty salon.