Death Penalty News

Death row inmate Benjamin Ritchie was executed by lethal injection shortly after midnight Tuesday at the Indiana State Prison in Michigan City, according to Department of Correction officials. The death sentence was carried out nearly 25 years after Ritchie shot and killed Beech Grove law enforcement officer William Toney. The condemned man had been on death row since his conviction in 2002. Details about the 45-year-old’s execution were sparse. No independent media representatives were permitted to witness the process.

MICHIGAN CITY, Ind. (AP) — An Indiana man convicted in the 2000 killing of a police officer is set to receive a lethal injection early Tuesday in the state’s second execution in 15 years. Benjamin Ritchie, 45, has been on death row for more than 20 years after being convicted in the fatal shooting of Beech Grove Police Officer Bill Toney during a foot chase. Unless there’s last-minute court action, Ritchie is scheduled to be executed “before the hour of sunrise” at the Indiana State Prison in Michigan City, according to state officials.

The Indiana Parole Board rejected a clemency plea from Benjamin Ritchie, recommending that Gov. Mike Braun allow the death row inmate’s May 20 execution to proceed as scheduled. Ritchie, who fatally shot Beech Grove law enforcement officer William Toney during a police pursuit on Sept. 29, 2000, had petitioned the board to commute his death sentence to life without parole. In a letter dated Tuesday, board chairwoman Gwen Horth said the five-member panel had reviewed Ritchie’s application, including “a vast amount of testimony and evidence” regarding his recent diagnosis of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome Disorder (FASD), as well as his history of childhood abuse and neglect, and his conduct while incarcerated.

The condemned man has exhausted his appeals but is likely to seek a clemency plea. Indiana Supreme Court justices on Tuesday set a May 20 execution date for death row inmate Benjamin Ritchie, who was convicted in 2002 for killing a law enforcement officer from Beech Grove. The high court’s decision followed a series of exhausted appeals previously filed by Ritchie and his legal team. The inmate’s request for post-conviction relief was denied in Tuesday’s 13-page order, penned by Chief Justice Loretta Rush, although she disagreed with the decision in her opinion.

TALLAHASSEE — The Florida Supreme Court on Thursday unanimously refused to block the scheduled Oct. 3 execution of Michael Duane Zack, rejecting arguments that he should be spared the death penalty because of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. Justices upheld an Escambia County circuit judge’s ruling last month against Zack, who was sent to Death Row in the 1996 murder of a woman during a crime spree in Northwest Florida. Attorneys for Zack also are asking a federal appeals court to halt the execution, after a U.S. district judge turned down their arguments.

Lawyers for a Nevada death row prisoner convicted of murdering 4 people at a grocery store in 1999 filed court documents Tuesday requesting clemency for their client. The public defenders asked for Zane Floyd's death sentence to be commuted to life in prison without parole citing new evidence detailing his "severe mental impairments," according to a news release. "Had the jury been presented with this information, 1 or more jurors may have voted to spare him from execution," the release said. Floyd was sentenced to death for the 1999 murders of four employees at a Las Vegas supermarket -- Lucy Tarantino, Thomas Darnell, Chuck Leos and Dennis "Troy" Sargent. He also was found guilty of injuring a 5th employee and sexually assaulting a woman at his home before the shootings. The clemency petition said the jury that sentenced Floyd to death didn't hear testimony that he had fetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD) or post-traumatic stress disorder devel...

Texas executes Mark Soliz for a 2010 Johnson County slaying. He said fetal alcohol disorder should have excluded him from death. Soliz and another man were convicted in the shooting death of a Johnson County woman during a robbery in her home. His lawyers pushed to stop his execution, saying fetal alcohol spectrum disorder should be treated like an intellectual disability. On Tuesday, Texas executed Mark Soliz for the 2010 home robbery and shooting death of a North Texas woman. Soliz, 37, was convicted and sentenced to death in 2012 for the murder of Nancy Weatherly, 61, and the robbery of her Johnson County home, according to court records. Prosecutors said the murder was part of an 8-day crime spree during which Soliz and another man, Jose Ramos, robbed random people at gunpoint, and Soliz killed another man. Soliz and his lawyers had long argued that his life should be spared because he had fetal alcohol spectrum disorder, which they claimed is the “functional equ...

Death row inmate argues fetal alcohol spectrum disorder renders him unfit for execution 2 weeks after the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals stayed the execution of mentally disabled Dexter Johnson, another Texas death row inmate is hoping for the same outcome.  Mark Soliz filed several documents with the same court on Friday, Aug. 30, in hopes of staving off his upcoming execution on Sept. 10. Soliz was sentenced to death in 2012 for the murder of Nancy Weatherly during a botched robbery of her home following a weeklong crime spree. Since the trial, Soliz's counsel has argued that fetal alcohol spectrum disorder renders him mentally unfit for execution under the U.S. Supreme Court's holding in Atkins v. Virginia . Soliz now argues, as did Johnson, that recent changes to the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) make his diagnosis the "'functional equivalent' of conditions already recogniz...