Convicted murderer Roy Lee Ward is scheduled to be executed at the Indiana State Prison before sunrise Oct. 10. (Mugshot from the Indiana Department of Correction)
The Indiana Parole Board on Wednesday recommended against granting clemency to death row prisoner Roy Ward, setting up a final decision by Gov. Mike Braun about two weeks before Ward’s scheduled Oct. 10 execution.
The five-member panel deliberated behind closed doors and released its recommendation letter to the governor outlining its reasoning. Board members 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.
The board’s decision is advisory. State law gives the governor sole authority to decide whether to accept the recommendation and commute Ward’s sentence, grant a reprieve or allow the execution to proceed.
Braun has yet to announce his verdict.
Unless the governor 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.
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Roy Ward Recommendation
Ward declined to appear before the board. In a written affidavit, he said his autism spectrum disorder diagnosis complicates his ability to communicate, and that he wanted to “avoid any misinterpretation” of his remorse.
Instead, his defense team argued before the board on Monday that his life should be spared. Lawyers pointed to evidence that Ward “has been consistently remorseful” and asked the board to consider his autism diagnosis as a mitigating factor.
The board acknowledged the legal counsel’s argument that Ward was misdiagnosed with antisocial personality disorder during trial, and that autism spectrum disorder would have better explained his behavior. Defense counsel emphasized that those with antisocial personality disorder do not feel remorse, whereas individuals with autism can — and they recounted instances of Ward expressing remorse.
But the board wrote that it gave “little weight” to either diagnosis, concluding that the jury’s findings were supported by the facts and that the preferred autism diagnosis “still does not provide the Board with any information into why this crime occurred.”
The panel also noted that because Ward declined to appear, they were unable to question him directly, as they often do in clemency proceedings. Without that interview, members said they could not gain additional insight into what led to the crime or whether Ward’s remorse reflected genuine rehabilitation.
The state — along with members of Payne’s family and community — urged the board to deny clemency, telling the panel that Ward “deserves no mercy,” and that sparing him would deny Payne’s family the justice they’ve long awaited.
DOC obtains more pentobarbital
The clemency recommendation was handed down less than a day after newly filed court records disclosed significant details about Indiana’s execution drug stockpile.
In pending federal litigation brought by Ward, the Indiana Attorney General’s office confirmed Tuesday 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 — after Ward’s scheduled execution on Oct. 10 — and the third set expires in March 2026.
As of late August, Braun said the DOC didn’t yet have the necessary execution drugs, but the state would purchase more pentobarbital when necessary.
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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 or if any of those are expected to expire before use.
The filings by the attorney general’s office were in response to Ward’s arguments 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, citing evidence that pentobarbital 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.”
More execution drug details
For more than a year, the state has resisted releasing details about its lethal injection drugs.
Attorneys for Ward and other death row prisoners have argued that compounded pentobarbital degrades quickly and can lose effectiveness or become contaminated because it is mixed in small batches by compounding pharmacies rather than manufactured under conditions regulated by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
But the state’s latest court filings 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.
Ward also suggested firing squad or nitrogen hypoxia as alternative methods, but the state rejected those options. Currently, Indiana law only permits executions to be carried out via lethal injection.
Public records also outline how DOC previously destroyed expired doses.
A “DEA Form 41,” used for documenting the destruction of controlled substances, revealed that pentobarbital was “burned” at the Putnamville Correctional Facility on June 6. Another record shows two doses of pentobarbital were destroyed on July 10 at the Indiana State Prison by “pour(ing)” them into “kitty litter.”
It remains unclear where the execution drugs are sourced from, however. State law still protects the identity of suppliers.
Indiana Code prohibits disclosure of “the supplier’s identity through discovery or as evidence in any civil or criminal proceeding” and exempts suppliers from oversight by the pharmacy and medical licensing boards.
State law also does not provide access for journalists to witness executions unless invited by the condemned person. A federal lawsuit challenging that restriction is still pending. Indiana Capital Chronicle is a plaintiff in the case.
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