Inside the death chamber at the Indiana State Prison in Michigan City. Photo from the Indiana Department of Correction.

By Niki Kelly
Indiana Capital Chronicle

INDIANAPOLIS — Gov. Mike Braun denied clemency to death row inmate Roy Lee Ward in an announcement early Monday, Sept. 29.

“After carefully reviewing the unanimous recommendation from the State Parole Board, I have decided to allow the execution of Roy Lee Ward to proceed as planned for Friday, Oct. 10,” he said.

Unless a court intervenes, Ward will be the third person executed since Indiana resumed capital punishment in December 2024, after more than a decade-long pause. Braun denied clemency for another death row inmate, Benjamin Ritchie, earlier this year.

The Indiana Parole Board last week recommended against granting clemency to Ward.

The five-member panel cited the “brutal nature” of Ward’s 2001 rape and murder of 15-year-old Stacy Payne, emphasizing that Payne was conscious during the attack and her “final hours living with the injuries that Roy Lee Ward inflicted on her.”

“Candidly, this Board reviews thousands of cases a year, many with gruesome facts, but the victimization of Stacy Payne stood out to us,” wrote parole board chairperson Gwen Horth.

Ward’s legal team has argued in court that Indiana’s current protocol creates a constitutionally unacceptable risk of pain and suffering, in violation of the Eighth Amendment.

The inmate’s legal team continues to challenge the use of the drug pentobarbital, citing evidence that it can cause flash pulmonary edema and sensations of drowning. They point to Ritchie’s execution in May, when witnesses reportedly saw the inmate “lurch upward, as if to sit up, in a spasm” after the injection, a reaction they say is “inconsistent with the normal effects of unadulterated pentobarbital.”

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.

The governor previously disclosed that state officials spent $1.175 million on lethal injection doses over the past year — $600,000 of which was spent by former Gov. Eric Holcomb’s administration on drugs that expired before use. The cost has been between $275,000 and $300,000 per dose.

State officials have not responded to the Indiana Capital Chronicle’s questions about the amount paid for the latest three doses.

The state’s court filings also stressed that DOC is using “manufactured injectable pentobarbital” — not a compounded version — to carry out executions. Manufactured pentobarbital is produced in sterile facilities under federal quality controls, with longer shelf lives and stricter oversight than compounded alternatives, according to court filings.

Ward’s attorneys proposed that executions could be carried out more humanely if DOC administered a “pre-dose” of fentanyl or another opioid before pentobarbital, but Neal said in his declaration that the department “does not intend to use fentanyl as part of carrying out the death sentence” and that it is not included in the prison’s directives.