Court upholds sentence in slaying of Spencer County Teen
Attorney General committed to seeking justice in Roy Lee Ward case
INDIANAPOLIS – A court has rejected the latest appeal of a death row offender and agreed with the State of Indiana that the original sentence should remain intact.
On November 10, a judge in Spencer Circuit Court denied the post-conviction relief petition of Roy Lee Ward stemming from the slaying of a 15-year-old girl in 2001. In the ruling, Special Judge Robert Pigman of Vanderburgh County rejected every claim that Ward’s defense team had raised.
“In considering the complicated procedural history of this case, let us not forget the innocent victim, Stacy Payne, who was killed in a horrifically violent manner by an intruder in her own home, and let us not forget her family. My office is committed to obtaining justice in this case and ensuring that the laws of this state are carried out and the rulings of the trial court are upheld,†Indiana Attorney General Greg Zoeller said. Zoeller’s office represents the State of Indiana when offenders appeal their convictions and sentences.
Ward stands convicted and sentenced to death for the July 11, 2001, murder and rape of 15-year-old Payne in her Spencer County home. Ward attacked Payne in the presence of her younger sister and fatally slashed her with a knife, and he still was holding the knife when police arrived.
Ward was first convicted and sentenced to death in 2002; but the Indiana Supreme Court reversed the convictions in 2004 due to pretrial publicity. He was retried, convicted, and again sentenced to death in 2007; and his convictions and sentence were affirmed on appeal.
Ward then filed an appeal called a petition for post-conviction relief (PCR) in Spencer Circuit Court, raising numerous and varied claims, all of which the post-conviction court – Judge Pigman – rejected in the recent ruling. Zoeller’s office, through Deputy Attorney General James B. Martin and Deputy Attorney General Kelly Miklos, represented the State in the appellate case.
Next, Ward can ask the post-conviction relief court to reconsider its own ruling, and from there he could seek to appeal again to the Indiana Supreme Court. He has 30 days to initiate that process. Once the post-conviction relief process is exhausted, Ward then could attempt to bring a federal habeas corpus petition in the federal courts.
“The costs of capital punishment litigation concern me greatly. The prolonged appeals of death row offenders can drag out for years before the sentence is carried out, and the costs of the legal defense to which they are entitled is significant for the public. Most concerning is the toll the interminable delays take upon the victims’ families with no sense of finality in sight,†Zoeller said.
Earlier this week, Zoeller moderated a Criminal Justice Summit at the University of Notre Dame that focused on the costs and financial impact of the death penalty in Indiana. Several expert panelists from the prosecution, defense and courts offered their assessment of capital litigation in Indiana and expressed concerns about prohibitive costs. A Rutgers University economics professor, Anne Morrison Piehl, Ph.D., presented a study that suggested some possible areas of containing costs: by limiting the types of defense expert witnesses who can be called to testify in capital murder trials, or capping the fees they can charge, or developing more aggressive audit procedures after the fact.
Zoeller noted that approximately 75 attorneys and law students attended Monday’s Criminal Justice Summit, and he hopes it sparks discussion in the legal community and Legislature about death penalty costs, as all levels of government in Indiana wrestle with revenue shortfalls due to the economy.
