Man executed for killing police officer

Benjamin Ritchie, a 45-year-old Indiana man convicted in the fatal shooting of a police officer in 2000 has been executed by lethal injection in the state’s second execution in 15 years.

Ritchie had been on Indiana’s death row since 2002, when he was convicted of 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 Correction officials.

IDOC said in a statement that the process started shortly after midnight and Ritchie was pronounced dead at 12:46 a.m.

Ritchie’s last meal was from the Olive Garden and he expressed love, support and peace for his friends and family, according to the statement.

Under state law, he was allowed five witnesses at his execution, which included his attorney Steve Schutte, who told reporters he had a limited view of the process.

“I couldn’t see his face. He was lying flat by that time,” Schutte said. “He sat up, twitched, laid back down.”

The process was carried out hours after the U.S. Supreme Court declined to take the case, exhausting all of Ritchie’s legal options to fight the death sentence.

Dozens of people, both anti-death penalty advocates and supporters of Toney, stood outside the prison until early Tuesday.

Indiana resumed executions in December after a year’s long hiatus due to a scarcity of lethal injection drugs nationwide.

Prison officials provided photos of the execution chamber before Joseph Corcoran’s execution, showing a space that looks like an operating room with a gurney, fluorescent lighting and an adjacent viewing room.

They’ve since offered few other details.

Among the 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 Associated Press and other media organisations filed a federal lawsuit in Indiana seeking media access, but a federal judge denied a preliminary injunction last week that would have allowed journalists to witness Ritchie’s execution and future ones.

The judge found that barring the news media doesn’t violate the First Amendment nor does it single out the news media for unequal treatment.

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 then fired at Toney during a foot chase, killing him.

At the time Ritchie was on probation from 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. (AP/NAN)