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player ready...Death row inmate Roy Lee Ward will be executed Friday at the Indiana State Prison in Michigan City after exhausting all legal options to stop his execution.
Gov. Mike Braun issued a brief statement Sept. 29 that he will follow the recommendation of the Indiana State Parole Board to move forward with the execution.
“After carefully reviewing the unanimous recommendation from the Indiana Parole Board, I have decided to allow the execution of Roy Lee Ward to proceed as planned for October 10,” Braun said in the statement.
The Indiana Parole Board recommended unanimously that Braun deny Ward’s request for commutation of his death sentence, Indiana Parole Board Chair Gwendolyn Horth wrote in a letter to Braun Sept. 24.
In July 2001, Ward went to 15-year-old Stacy Payne’s house in Dale and convinced her to let him inside, according to court records.
Stacy’s younger sister, who was napping upstairs, woke up to Stacy’s screams. Her sister saw a man on top of Stacy while Stacy pleaded for him to stop, according to court records.
After her sister called police, the town marshal arrived and saw Ward standing in a doorway inside the house holding a knife. After handcuffing Ward, the marshal found Stacy on the floor in a massive pool of blood, conscious and with traumatic injuries consistent with rape and stabbing, according to court records.
The local hospital was not equipped to treat Stacy’s injuries, so she was flown to the University of Louisville Hospital, where she died roughly five hours after Ward entered her house, according to court records.
After pleading guilty to rape and murder, Ward has twice been sentenced to death – first by a Spencer County jury in 2002, then by a Clay County jury in 2007, after the Indiana Supreme Court overturned the initial sentence.
The “brutal nature” of the rape and murder Ward committed against Payne was “considered heavily” by the board, Horth wrote. During public hearings for Ward’s clemency petition, the board heard testimony that Stacy “was conscious and aware throughout her attack and her final hours living with the injuries that Roy Lee Ward inflicted on her,” Horth wrote.
“The nature and circumstances of Mr. Ward’s offense were heavily considered by this Board in making our recommendation,” Horth wrote. “Candidly, this board reviews thousands of cases a year, many with gruesome facts, but the victimization of Stacy Payne stood out to us.”
The board received Ward’s clemency petition to commute his death sentence to a sentence of life in prison without parole on Sept. 5, Horth wrote.
Ward was scheduled to be interviewed by the board Sept. 19, but the board received an email ahead of time that Ward declined the interview but still wished to pursue clemency, Horth wrote.
“Without being able to discuss the facts and circumstances of the offense with Mr. Ward, as we often do in clemency proceedings, the Board was unable to gain any further information to understand what could have possibly led to these horrific actions,” Horth wrote.
The board held a public hearing Sept. 22 and heard from Ward’s legal team and the state. Ward’s legal team told the board that Ward was misdiagnosed with antisocial personality disorder and should have been diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder, Horth wrote.
Ward’s counsel stated the biggest difference between the two diagnoses is that someone with antisocial personality disorder does not feel remorse but someone with autism spectrum disorder does feel remorse, Horth wrote. His legal team stated Ward has expressed remorse in conversations with his attorneys, she wrote.
In Ward’s second trial, his trial counsel described him as a “severe psychopath,” based on pre-trial psychiatric evaluations, Horth wrote.
During the public hearing, the Indiana Capital Chronicle reported that Ward’s defense attorneys Michelle Law and Larry Komp spent about 80 minutes before the parole board.
“Roy is not a psychopath,” Law said. “His own attorneys labeled him as such before… but Roy has feelings, and he himself has recognized that he has disabilities and issues that he wanted help for.”
But, Horth wrote, the board gave “little weight” to either diagnosis. The diagnosis does not provide details into why the crime occurred, she wrote.
Stacy’s family testified before the board about the anguish that remains, the Indiana Capital Chronicle reported.
“We will never hear her voice, never have the joy of watching her grow into the incredible woman she was meant to be. Grief doesn’t just break our hearts, it reshapes who we are, and we don’t get to go back,” her mother, Julie Wininger, said through tears. “We have to learn to exist in a world without Stacy.”
In reviewing Ward’s clemency petition, the board read documents from Ward’s jury trials, appeal and post-conviction relief proceedings, as well as an expanded application for executive clemency with documents from Ward’s counsel about his psychological evaluations.
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Ward has both juvenile and adult criminal offenses, Horth wrote, including public indecency and harassment, and probation as a juvenile. As an adult, Ward has an “extremely lengthy” criminal history – with crimes spanning from Indiana, Kentucky and Missouri – including cases of battery, theft, burglary, forgery, drug offenses, indecent exposure and public indecency, she wrote.
As an inmate, Ward was reported 14 times for incidents including sexual conduct, use of a controlled substance and battery against an offender, Horth wrote.
“This pattern of conduct mirrors his criminal history and tends to communicate that Mr. Ward is still struggling with whatever affliction is causing him to behave this way,” Horth wrote.
Ward’s legal team continues to challenge the use of the drug pentobarbital in executions, citing evidence that it can cause flash pulmonary edema and sensations of drowning, the Indiana Capital Chronicle reported.
They point to Benjamin Ritchie’s execution in May, when witnesses reportedly saw the inmate “lurch upward, as if to it up, in a spasm” after the injection, a reaction they say is “inconsistent with the normal effects of unadulterated pentobarbital,” the Indiana Capital Chronicle reported.
In pending federal litigation brought by Ward, the Indiana Attorney General’s office confirmed last week that the Department of Correction has obtained three sets of pentobarbital.
Indiana State Prison Warden Ron Neal said in a sworn declaration submitted to the Northern District judge that two of those sets will expire at the end of October and the third set expires in March 2026.