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One week before Benjamin Ritchie’s scheduled execution, family and friends of slain Beech Grove law enforcement officer William Toney urged the Indiana Parole Board on Monday to reject the death row inmate’s bid for clemency.
The Indianapolis hearing was the second and final opportunity for the board to openly weigh Ritchie’s plea for a commuted sentence.
Ritchie, who has been on Indiana’s death row since his 2002 conviction, is set to be executed May 20 for the 2000 killing.
The five-member panel heard from a remorseful Ritchie at the Indiana State Prison last week, but the condemned man did not appear at the latest hearing in Indianapolis. Instead, the session was reserved for public comments from those who oppose — and support — clemency.
The governor, in tandem with the parole board, can elect to commute a death sentence to life imprisonment.
Nine of Toney’s family members, friends and fellow police officers at the Beech Grove Police Department who spoke at Monday’s hearing were resolute: “Deny clemency.”
“It’s time. We’re all tired,” said Dee Dee Horen, Toney’s widow. “It is time for this chapter of my story, our story, to be closed. It’s time for us to remember Bill, to remember Bill’s life, and not his death.”
The officer was also survived by two daughters. Neither spoke at the hearing.
Horen, a Beech Grove elementary school teacher, rejected Ritchie’s claims that a difficult childhood fueled his actions.
“I’ve taught 100 Benjamin Ritchies, and they had difficult upbringings, and they had obstacles in their lives, and to my knowledge, none of them made this decision — none of them made a choice to be a criminal and kill a police officer,” Horen said. “We all have choices in our life, and he chose to kill Bill.”
She called on the board, and the governor, to follow through with Ritchie’s execution “because we believe in a system that honors its protectors and punishes those who choose to destroy our peaceful towns.”
The board will make a recommendation, but a final clemency decision about whether to commute Ritchie’s death sentence to life in prison without parole will ultimately be up to Gov. Mike Braun. There’s no timetable for the board, or Braun, to issue opinions.
A ‘cowardly ambush’
More than 20 law enforcement officers — including a dozen from the Beech Grove Police Department — attended Monday’s hearing.
Per court documents, the underlying crime began as a police pursuit of a stolen van on Sept. 29, 2000. Toney later pursued Ritchie on foot. Ritchie ultimately fired four shots at the police officer, who did not survive the shooting.
Ritchie said that on the night of the incident, he was with a group trying to steal rims from car dealers. He said the subsequent police chase “sped out of control” and ended in a “shootout.”
The inmate said he regretted his “horrible actions,” which Ritchie and his legal team have attributed to an unstable upbringing and lifelong brain damage from fetal alcohol exposure.
Beech Grove Deputy Police Chief Robert Mercuri, who was a sergeant and supervisor in charge on the night of the killing, was involved in the initial vehicle pursuit and was among the first to render aid after the shooting.
“I found my friend Bill lying on the ground in that backyard. I attempted CPR. I rode with him in an ambulance to Methodist Hospital, praying the entire time that he would survive,” Mercuri recalled.
He said Toney had volunteered to work an extra shift to help a colleague that night. Mercuri called Toney “a rising star in law enforcement” who “brought energy and optimism” to the job and was a role model to other officers.
He refuted Ritchie’s claims of a shootout, emphasizing that Toney was targeted by “a cowardly ambush.”
Ritchie hid in bushes and fired the first shot at Toney while the officer was clearing a fence, Mercuri told the parole board. He said the inmate still “does not own up to his dishonorable act.”
“Benjamin Ritchie continues to put out there that he was just some kid, and and the truth is that he is a conniving, manipulating predator who prays on the weak, good and unsuspecting people of the world,” Mercuri said, adding that he “would victimize the weaker prisoners and create a bunch of Ben Ritchies, emboldened by the fact that he played the system,” if granted clemency and allowed to enter the general prison population.
Tyler Banks, with the Indiana Attorney General’s Office, additionally argued against clemency based on Ritchie’s repeated violent behavior in prison. He pointed to Ritchie’s 43 conduct reports since 2001 that stemmed from assaults of officers and other inmates, in addition to threats, intimidation, disorderly conduct and other “disruptive” incidents.
“He’s tried to convince you that if you commute his sentence, he will not be a problem, but an asset, for those other offenders in general population,” Banks said. “His conduct in the highly-structured environment of death row proves otherwise.”
Although Ritchie claims his earlier defense lawyers were “ineffective” because they failed to present his FASD diagnosis at trial or in post-conviction proceedings, Banks maintained the trial record already contained extensive evidence of prenatal substance abuse.
“All that Ritchie has that is new or different is simply a new name for a diagnosis,” Banks said.
A ‘hidden disability’
But an hour-long presentation from a mental health expert argued otherwise, emphasizing that Ritchie suffers from a “hidden disability” that went undiagnosed for most of his life and his condition has only recently been investigated.
Dr. Megan Carter, a forensic psychologist and expert in fetal alcohol spectrum disorders (FASD), told the board she diagnosed Ritchie with pFAS, or partial FAS. Carter noted in her evaluation of Ritchie that he has 15 of the 23 deficits of the disorder.
She said he especially struggles with speech, emotional regulation, academics and social skills.
“People think that is a childhood disorder, but it’s really a lifelong disorder,” Carter said. “It’s often known as a hidden disability because … you can’t see the problem. But you see it in their behaviors and their emotions.”
The inmate’s current counsel said prior lawyers “completely failed to investigate the source of Ritchie’s serious brain damage” because they “erroneously believed” he lacked the facial features that are commonly associated with prenatal alcohol exposure — like small eyes, a flat midface and thin upper lip.
Carter said less than 10% of individuals with FASD exhibit those facial features, though.
FASD inhibits a person’s ability to process information quickly and understand consequences, and also impacts their decision-making skills, emotional regulation and abstract thinking, Carter explained. She held that people with FASD, “in a lot of ways,” have brains similar to toddlers.
The psychologist cited evidence that Ritchie’s birth mother drank heavily during pregnancy and was neglectful during his early childhood. In addition to the FASD diagnosis, testing of Ritchie’s baby teeth revealed significant lead exposure.
Carter said Ritchie’s neurodevelopmental condition left him especially vulnerable to reacting violently under stress.
“When he gets into stressful situations, like this was on that night, his frontal lobes — which are already not functioning very well — kind of go offline, and he goes more into a primitive, survival mode,” Carter said. “That means that he’s not thinking about consequences. He’s not considering other people’s perspectives. He’s just simply reacting.”
She noted that in “emotionally-charged situations,” those with FASD “tend to be more reactive” due to a faster and increased release of cortisone and other stress hormones.
“The situation was unique. It was different than he’d ever experienced,” Carter continued. “It was unpredictable, emotionally-charged, unstructured and unsupported, and that’s when individuals with FASD have the most trouble conforming their behavior to what’s expected.”
The expert additionally maintained that an earlier diagnosis and “external supports” in school and at home might have changed the course of Ritchie’s life. Had he been diagnosed with FASD before age six, Ritchie would’ve had a “higher chance” of staying out of the criminal justice system.
“A lot of people have had really terrible childhoods, right? They were beaten, they were neglected, and they don’t go on to commit crimes. But they don’t have a lot of behavior dysregulation. They don’t have severe deficits like (Ritchie),” Carter said. “We’re not going to see the neurocognitive scores that we see in FASD. … I think those things are important to acknowledge as contributions to his brain development and his social development.”
John Mast, a former special education teacher who worked with Ritchie for more than three years starting in the early 1990s, further described him as a student with a “severe emotional handicap” that “affected all aspects of life,” including in the classroom.
Mast recalled Ritchie’s “violent and aggressive” outbursts in response to “minor,” everyday disruptions like a lost pencil or school bus delay.
“Given my experiences with Ben as an adolescent, this situation was the exact type of situation where those severe emotional disabilities became fully evident and engaged,” he said. “He did not have the emotional tools, he did not have the skills, to make a different and acceptable decision.”
Members of the parole board asked about Ritchie’s psychological profile, his ability to understand consequences, and whether new neuroimaging might shed more light on his condition and his thinking at the time of his crime.
Ritchie’s attorney, Steve Schutte, said “those are legitimate questions” that the defense team wanted to explore before the Indiana Supreme Court, but the justices denied requests for a new hearing. The inmate’s lawyers are now seeking a last-minute execution pause from the U.S. Supreme Court.
“The governor and this board now have to make a decision without the kind of process we’d usually rely on,” Schutte said.
“(Ritchie) is not looking for sympathy,” Schutte added. “What he’s asked is to be allowed to spend the rest of his life in prison.”
Neither the governor nor any current members of the state’s parole board have deliberated a death penalty clemency case before Ritchie’s.
Three clemencies have been granted in Indiana since 1976.
The most recent was in 2005, when then-Gov. Mitch Daniels commuted the death sentence for Arthur Baird, who killed his pregnant wife and her parents in 1985. Although the parole board denied his petition for clemency, Daniels granted Baird clemency one day before the scheduled execution, in part citing questions about Baird’s sanity.
The Indiana Capital Chronicle is an independent, nonprofit news organization that covers state government, policy and elections.
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