The Indiana Supreme Court has set Oct. 10 as the tentative date for the state to end the life of a 52-year-old man who raped and murdered a 15-year-old girl.
According to court records, Roy Lee Ward was sentenced to death in 2007 after pleading guilty to assaulting and killing Stacy Payne on July 11, 2001, inside the girl's home in the southern Indiana town of Dale.
On Monday, the state's high court said it has not yet decided whether to grant Republican Attorney General Todd Rokita's request to set Ward's execution date.
However, mindful that all executions obligate other state and federal officials to "work backwards from that date to fulfill their own important duties related to an ordered execution," Chief Justice Loretta Rush said the Supreme Court is setting a tentative date "out of respect for all parties with important responsibilities in this process."
In this case, Ward's attorneys have indicated an interest in challenging the validity of Indiana's one-drug lethal injection protocol, as well as pursuing potential federal litigation and the opportunity to seek clemency from the governor.
Republican Gov. Mike Braun also recently acknowledged Indiana has exhausted its supply of the lethal injection drug pentobarbital after spending nearly $1.2 million in taxpayer funds to acquire four doses of the drug.
Records show one dose was used in May to kill convicted cop killer Benjamin Ritchie, 45, and another in December 2024 to end the life of quadruple homicide perpetrator Joseph Corcoran, 49. The two other doses expired and were thrown away, Braun said.
The governor previously suggested due to the high cost of obtaining additional doses that he was inclined to wait for the Republican-controlled General Assembly to weigh-in on the issue of capital punishment when it convenes in January 2026, including possible proposals to abolish the death penalty altogether or to change the method of execution to firing squad.
"For all these considerations and more, we lack the parties' insight into what they and their counsel would anticipate as the next steps in the judicial and executive branch process that are specific to Ward if an execution date is set," Rush said in the Supreme Court's 5-0 order setting instead a tentative execution date for Ward.
Braun subsequently announced Monday afternoon that he's directed the Department of Correction to make all preparations needed to carry out Ward's execution.
The high court's schedule for subsequent legal filings suggests it could definitively set Ward's execution date in late August or September — barring action by other entities.
Indiana law currently specifies all executions may only be carried out by lethal injection at the state prison in Michigan City.
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