The state of Indiana has just executed a man who was convicted of murdering a police officer in 2000.
45-year-old Benjamin Ritchie was executed by lethal injection on Tuesday morning. This marks the state’s second execution in 15 years.
This from slaynews.com.
Ritchie had been on Indiana’s death row since 2002 and was convicted of shooting and killing Beech Grove Police Officer Bill Toney during a chase on foot.
Ritchie was executed at the Indiana State Prison in Michigan City, according to Indiana Department of Corrections (IDOC) officials. In a statement, the IDOC said that the process started shortly after midnight. He was pronounced dead at 12:46 a.m.
According to the statement, Richie’s last meal was from Olive Garden, and he expressed love, support, and peace for his friends and family.
Under state law, he was allowed five witnesses at his execution. The witnesses included his attorney, Steve Schutte, who told reporters he had a limited view of the process.
Schutte said:
I couldn’t see his face. He was lying flat by that time. He sat up, twitched, laid back down.
The process was carried out hours after the U.S. Supreme Court declined to take the case. At this point, all of Ritchie’s legal options to fight the death sentence had been exhausted. Dozens of people, both anti-death penalty advocates and supporters of Toney, stood outside the prison until early Tuesday.
Ritchie’s attorneys have fought the death sentence. They argued his legal counsel at trial was ineffective because his lawyers failed to fully investigate and present evidence on his fetal alcohol spectrum disorders and childhood lead exposure.
Current defense attorneys say Ritchie suffered “severe brain damage” because his mother abused alcohol and drugs during pregnancy. They claim that he has struggled with decision-making as a result. He was also diagnosed with bipolar disorder in 2005.
Disability rights advocates argued that Ritchie’s brain damage should have excluded him from the death penalty.
Ritchie told the parole board earlier this month:
I’ve ruined my life and other people’s lives, and I’m so sorry for that night.
Further:
You can’t take back what you did.
Indiana resumed executions in December after a year-long hiatus due to a scarcity of lethal injection drugs nationwide. Among 27 states with death penalty laws, Indiana is one of two that bars media witnesses. The other, Wyoming, has conducted one execution in the last half-century.
The execution in Indiana is among 12 scheduled in eight states this year. Ritchie’s execution and two others in Texas and Tennessee will be carried out this week.
Ritchie was 20 when he and others stole a van in Beech Grove, near Indianapolis. He fired at Toney during a foot chase, killing him. At the time, Ritchie was on probation for a 1998 burglary conviction.
Toney, 31, had worked at the Beech Grove Police Department for two years. The married father of two was the first officer of the small department to be killed by gunfire in the line of duty.
Relatives spoke at a clemency hearing last week in support of the execution. “It’s time. We’re all tired,” said Dee Dee Horen, who was Toney’s wife.
Further:
It is time for this chapter of my story, our story, to be closed.
And:
It’s time for us to remember Bill, to remember Bill’s life, and not his death.
Final thought: Without deterrence we would have anarchy.
