The history of capital punishment in Indiana is long, twisting and beset by problems.
The process that led to the early-morning Oct. 10 execution of Roy Lee Ward at the Indiana State Prison in Michigan City was certainly riddled with questions. Even more troubling, the public has no way of knowing for sure whether the execution itself was humane and trouble free.
That’s because Indiana, among the 27 states with death penalty laws, is one of just two that bar media witnesses.
What could possibly be a good reason for this? None that we can think of.
But there’s good reason to allow media to see the execution — so that it can be reported accurately, completely and objectively to the public.
Instead, the state of Indiana drops a veil over executions, shielding them from the public eye.
Perhaps it’s to avoid the embarrassment and shame of a process that costs hundreds of thousands of dollars and has been plagued by problems repeatedly over the course of decades.
The Death Penalty Information Center provides a historical recount of death penalty laws, executions and litigation across the country. Here are some lowlights of the history of capital punishment in Indiana:
• 1977: The state Supreme Court strikes down Indiana’s 1972 death penalty sentencing law, which required all those convicted of firstdegree murder to be executed, in response to a North Carolina Supreme Court case decision.
• 1985: After being zapped with 2,300 volts, William Vandiver is still breathing. Herbert Shaps, Vandiver’s attorney, reports seeing smoke and smelling something burning during the execution.
• 1996: A year after the state’s change from electrocution to lethal injection, the injection team struggles to find an adequate vein and it takes an hour and nine minutes for Tommie Smith to be pronounced dead.
• 2017: The state Court of Appeals voids Indiana’s new lethal-injection protocol, ruling that the Department of Corrections had adopted the protocol without public notice or comment.
• 2021: The Indiana Supreme Court directs the Department of Correction to release documentation of efforts to obtain lethal injection drugs and “orders the department to pay more than half a million dollars in attorney fees for its bad faith non-compliance with the state’s public records act.”
Knowing the state’s sordid record related to executions makes the presence of a media representative to document executions absolutely paramount.
So does the extraordinary cost of the drug — the powerful sedative pentobarbital — currently used to put inmates to death in Indiana. Pentobarbital “comes from an unknown source and has been known to cause prisoners ‘excruciating’ pain during executions,” according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
While state officials have been tight-lipped about the cost of executing Ward, Gov. Mike Braun previously disclosed that the state spent $1.175 million in the past year — including $600,000 on doses that expired before use — on pentobarbital for lethal injection, the Indiana Capital Chronicle reported two days before Ward’s execution.
Ward had been convicted of the 2001 rape and murder of 15-year-old Stacy Payne in her family’s southern Indiana home.
His execution was the second in Indiana after a 15-year pause on capital punishment in the state ended in December 2024 with the execution of Joseph Corcoran, who had been convicted for the 1997 killings of four men in Fort Wayne.
Corcoran’s execution was documented by a journalist, but only because Corcoran had her on his list to witness the lethal injection.
No media representative was there to report on Ward’s death. “Ward’s witness list included attorneys, who were seated in an adjoining room with a partial view through a one-way window and no sound,” the Capital Chronicle reported.
Five men remain on death row in Indiana, but no executions are currently scheduled.
Before the next one is, the costs of lethal injection drugs must be fully reported by the state and, ultimately, the law must be modified to allow for an independent media presence for documentation.
Otherwise, Hoosiers will be left in the dark while another chapter in Indiana’s sordid history of executions is written.
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