Indiana Supreme Court confirms execution date for convicted Spencer County rapist, murderer

SPENCER COUNTY, Ind. - The Indiana Supreme Court has set the execution date for a Spencer County man convicted of raping and killing a 15-year-old girl in 2001.




According to an order obtained by FOX59/CBS4 on Thursday, the Indiana Supreme Court denied Roy Lee Ward's appeal, setting the stage for him to be officially executed at the Indiana State Prison in Michigan City on Oct. 10 before the hour of sunrise.




Previous reporting reveals that Ward waited for Stacy Payne's parents to leave their home for work on July 11, 2001. He then pretended to be looking for his lost dog before he persuaded Payne to let him inside her family's home. Once inside, Ward raped and murdered the girl.




Ward had requested that the case be delayed while citing "serious questions and concerns about whether the State of Indiana can carry out his execution in a constitutionally permissible manner."




Ward's attorneys have claimed the state has not provided them with information about the drugs that would be used in the execution. They filed several public records requests related to how much the drugs cost.




Ward's most recent appeals claimed that the state's method of execution, via lethal injection, combined with the state's failure to respond to his public records request, "violates his procedural and substantive due process rights under the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution."




"While Ward may have other avenues to challenge the execution method or protocol,
we agree with the State that a response to a "Motion to Set Execution Date" is not one of them.
Being duly advised, the Court finds there is no stay of execution now in effect and we must
complete our administrative task to set an execution date," a portion of the order read.

How did we get here?

According to previous reports, Ward was convicted and placed on death row in 2002. However, that initial ruling was reversed due to concerns that the verdict was influenced by "prejudicial pre-trial publicity."




When the case was sent to a lower court in 2007, Ward pleaded guilty and was sentenced to death again. A series of federal appeals ultimately prevented the December 2012 execution date from moving forward.




Two years later, Ward filed another appeal due to Indiana opting to use a different drug to carry out lethal injections due to a shortage of the variety the state typically used. A 2017 ruling determined that the state could not use a new combination of drugs to execute Ward. The state approved the use of a single-drug protocol for lethal doses of pentobarbital in 2024.




Now that Ward's execution date is finalized, he will be the third inmate to be executed in Indiana since December 2024, following the executions of Joseph Corcoran and Benjamin Ritchie. Both executions were carried out with pentobarbital.





via: https://fox59.com/news/indiana-supreme-court-confirms-execution-date-for-convicted-spencer-county-rapist-murderer/