Attorney general seeks execution date for Southern Indiana murderer on death row

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5 days ago

Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita has asked the state's Supreme Court to set an execution date for a convicted Southern Indiana murderer who has sat on death row for more than 20 years.
Rokita filed a motion Friday against Roy Lee Ward, the 52-year-old convicted in the 2001 rape and murder of Dale, Indiana, teenager Stacy Payne, a Heritage Hills High School cheerleader and honor roll student.
A jury first convicted Ward in 2002. He successfully appealed that conviction before a second jury recommended the death penalty in 2007.
His attorneys have since sought relief through appeals courts, lawsuits and the U.S. Supreme Court, all of which failed. As of now there's no court order preventing his execution, records state.
In the filing Friday, which was uploaded to Indiana's electronic court records system Monday, Rokita presses the state Supreme Court to "perform its necessary 'administrative task' to set an execution date." If the motion is approved, Rokita's office would ask that Ward be killed within 30 days of the order.
How that will be carried out, however, is uncertain.
The motion comes just a few weeks after Gov. Mike Braun announced the state had exhausted its supply of pentobarbital, the drug it has used to carry out two executions since December.
"We've got to address the broad issue of, what are other methods, the discussion of capital punishment in general," Braun told reporters at the Indiana Statehouse on June 3. "And then something that costs, I think, $300,000 a pop that has a 90-day shelf life, I'm not going to be for putting it on the shelf and then letting them expire."
Rokita's motion doesn't address the lack of pentobarbital. Indiana law mandates that "the punishment of death shall be inflicted by intravenous injection of a lethal substance or substances."
Ward knocked on the Payne's door on July 11, 2001 while 15-year-old Stacy and her younger sister were home alone. He reportedly lied to Stacy and told her he was looking for a lost dog.
What followed was a horrific assault and stabbing. Despite suffering unspeakable injuries, Payne survived while medics airlifted her to a hospital in Louisville, where she later died.
Police responded to the scene and found Ward inside, still holding the knife he used in the killing.
Witnesses in the 2002 trial testified that the Clark County native had a long history of "exhibitionism." He would reportedly order pizza or flowers just so he could expose himself to the delivery person. He was charged with public indecency multiple times and was on probation at the time of Payne's killing for a burglary conviction in Missouri.
According to Courier & Press reporting during his death penalty trial in 2002, authorities in Perry County and Hancock County, Kentucky, suspected Ward in multiple public indecency reports in the days before the murder.
If charged, his probation could have been revoked – and "perhaps we wouldn't be here," his defense attorney said at the time.
Before December, Indiana hadn't executed anyone since 2009.
That's when authorities lethally injected former Evansville man Matthew Eric Wrinkles. He'd been convicted in the in the July 21, 1994 shooting deaths of his estranged wife, Debra Jean Wrinkles, 31; her brother, Mark "Tony" Fulkerson, 28; and Fulkerson's wife, Natalie Fulkerson, 26.
There were the several reasons for the pause, but one was how difficult – and expensive – it became to obtain drugs for lethal injections. Ward sued the state when it named Brevital, pancuronium bromide and potassium chloride as the new ingredients in its lethal injection cocktail. The Indiana Supreme Court eventually ruled against him.
No executions were ever carried out using the drugs, however. And in June 2024, Rokita and then-Gov. Eric Holcomb announced the state had acquired an unknown amount of pentobarbital to restart the death penalty. After filing a lawsuit to obtain public records, the Indiana Capital Chronicle found the state paid $900,000 for the drug. How much officials bought, and from whom, was redacted.
The lethal injection of Joseph Corcoran followed on Dec. 18, 2024. A jury convicted him of killing Robert Scott Turner, 32; Douglas A. Stillwell, 30; Timothy G. Bricker, 30, and his brother, James Corcoran, on July 26, 1997.
And on May 20, officials lethally injected Benjamin Ritchie for the Sept. 29, 2000 murder of Beech Grove Police officer William Toney. Ritchie had stolen a car that night, and Toney was chasing him through the streets when Ritchie shot the officer four times, the fatal round striking him just above the lip of his bulletproof vest.
Toney died one day before his 32nd birthday, leaving behind a wife and two young children.
Ritchie's attorney argued he had "profound brain damage and developmental disabilities," and the execution should have never been carried out.
If the court rules in favor of Rokita and the state obtains more drugs, Ward would apparently follow them. He's one of six men awaiting execution on Indiana's death row.
According to her obituary, Stacy Payne made the most of her short time on Earth.
In addition to cheerleading, she played in the Heritage Hills band, served on student council, and was named student of the month. In her off hours she worked at Jenks Pizza in Dale and was a member of the youth group at St. Joseph Catholic Church.
Family called her caring, confident and loving.
"She was determined to always do her personal best," her mother, Julia, said during Ward's first sentencing hearing in December 2002. "She had so much potential."
This article originally appeared on Evansville Courier & Press: Indiana attorney general seeks execution date for Roy Lee Ward