MICHIGAN CITY, Ind. − In the early morning hours of Friday, Oct. 10, Indiana executed Roy Lee Ward via lethal injection.
Ward was sentenced to death for the 2001 murder of Stacy Payne, a 15-year-old Spencer County girl.
The execution began just after 12 a.m. Central time at the Indiana State Prison in Michigan City. Ward was declared dead at 12:33 a.m., according to the Indiana Department of Corrections.
According to DOC officials, Ward’s last meal was from Texas Corral and consisted of the following: One hamburger, one steak melt, one order of French fries, one baked potato with butter, one order of twelve fried shrimp, one sweet potato, one order of chicken alfredo, and one order of breadsticks.
Department of Correction officials said Ward’s last words were, “Brian is going to read them.”
Ward was originally scheduled to die 22 years ago, on Dec. 18, 2003. That became June 8, 2008, and then finally Dec. 11, 2012 − a date handed down by the Indiana Supreme Court.
Eight days before, however, Ward filed an application for a stay of execution in federal court. U.S. District Court Judge Richard Young granted it, giving Ward’s attorneys an additional 90 days to file a habeas corpus petition to have a federal judge review the conviction as a whole. That 90 days came and went several times over. And in 2015, a new knot presented itself.
With some drug manufacturers unwilling to allow states to use their products in executions, Indiana Department of Corrections was forced to select a new lethal injection cocktail: a mix of methohexital, potassium chloride and pancuronium bromide.
That had never been used in lethal injections before. Ward’s attorneys sued, saying DOC ignored state law by not following protocol in choosing the concoction. A LaPorte Circuit Court judge initially dismissed the claim, but a Court of Appeals panel reversed the decision, saying the state had violated Ward’s and other death row inmates’ civil rights under the Indiana and U.S. constitutions.
Indiana struggled to obtain lethal injection drugs for several years. Legislators even passed a law that shielded the identity of the manufacturer in hopes that would unclog the supply chain.
But a new drug didn’t materialize until last year, when DOC switched to the single-ingredient method of pentobarbital. To execute Joseph Corcoran on Dec. 18, 2024 and Benjamin Ritchie on May 20, 2025.
This article originally appeared on Evansville Courier & Press: Roy Lee Ward’s last meal, final words before execution in Spencer County teen’s murder
Reporting by Jon Webb, Evansville Courier & Press / Evansville Courier & Press
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