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Benjamin Ritchie
American convicted murderer From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Benjamin Donnie Ritchie (born May 30, 1980) is an American convicted murderer who shot and killed 31-year-old William Toney, a Beech Grove, Indiana police officer, on September 29, 2000. Ritchie was arrested and charged with the murder of Officer Toney and other offenses. He was subsequently sentenced to death on October 15, 2002, after his conviction on August 10 of that same year.[1]
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Ritchie appealed his death sentence, but he was unsuccessful in the regular appeals process. Most recently he cited bipolar disorder and cognitive impairments stemming from childhood abuse, personal drug use, and his mother's substance use during pregnancy as reasons for the Indiana Supreme Court to grant him the opportunity to file a successive post-conviction petition, but that was denied, and the court instead granted the state's motion for an execution date. Ritchie is currently incarcerated at the Indiana State Prison and is scheduled to be executed on May 20, 2025.[2] Ritchie was featured in a two-series documentary of the Indiana State Prison by British journalist Sir Trevor McDonald.[3][4]
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Early life
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Benjamin Donnie Ritchie was born on May 30, 1980. He grew up without knowing the identity of his biological father. Ritchie's mother, Marion Martin, had abused alcohol and drugs even during the time she was pregnant with Ritchie, and she worked as a stripper and abandoned her son twice before he was three years old. The husband of Ritchie's mother, Donald Peoples, likewise abandoned him after taking custody of Ritchie's two older half-brothers, and learning the truth that Ritchie was not related to him; Ritchie, whose birth name was Benjamin Peoples, changed his original surname to the current one after his adoption by Verna and Oscar Ritchie.[5][6]
During his schooling years, Ritchie struggled with behavioral and academic issues, including repeating the first grade and dropping out in the ninth grade. He was also said to have undergone counselling from a minister from the third to fourth grade, and he also underwent treatment at Community North Hospital at age ten. He was also diagnosed with bipolar disorder and cognitive impairments, with the childhood abuse and substance abuse of his mother as likely causes of these conditions.[5] In August 1998, Ritchie was found guilty of committing burglary, and by 2000, Ritchie was out of prison and placed under probation.[6]
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Murder of William Toney
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On September 29, 2000, Ritchie and two accomplices stole a white van from a local gas station in Beech Grove, Indiana.[7] The vehicular theft was reported to the police. About two hours after the filing of the theft report, Beech Grove police officer Matthew "Matt" Hickey spotted the stolen vehicle while he was on the way to a traffic accident site. He pursued the van after receiving confirmation through radio that the van was the same one stolen from the petrol station. Hickey was later joined by two other officers, Robert Mercuri and William Ronald Toney, in the pursuit.[8][9]
At that point in time, only Ritchie and one accomplice remained in the van while the officers were chasing them. After a short chase, the van pulled into the yard of one of the residential houses, where the pair escaped the van and ran in opposite directions. Ritchie's accomplice, 20-year-old Michael Greer, was caught by Officer Hickey. Officer William Toney continued to pursue Ritchie on foot. Subsequently, Ritchie brandished a handgun and shot Officer Toney four times. One of the shots penetrated Officer Toney in the upper chest above his bulletproof vest, resulting in the death of 31-year-old Officer William Toney, who left behind a wife and two daughters. Officer Toney had only worked for two years as a policeman since 1998 at the time of his murder.[8][10]
The next day, Ritchie was arrested at the home of his friend Michael Moody, who was the third person involved in the theft of the van, and therefore taken into custody for the fatal shooting of Officer Toney.[10]
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Trial of Benjamin Ritchie
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Charges and pre-trial developments
After his arrest, Benjamin Ritchie was charged with the murder of Officer William Toney.[11] Marion County Prosecutor Scott Newman confirmed in November 2000 that he would seek the death penalty for Ritchie.[12] Before the start of the trial, a gag order was put in place by a judge to bar the police and legal professionals related to the case from discussing about it outside the court. This was made in light of a media interview received by Ritchie, in which Ritchie claimed he accidentally killed Officer Toney,[13] which was supported by a friend.[14]
Originally, Michael Greer, Ritchie's companion who was caught in the same stolen van as Ritchie, was also charged with murder, but he was later convicted of assisting a criminal, theft and tresspassing after attaining a plea bargain, and agreed to testify against Ritchie. Greer faced the maximum sentence of eight years in prison for the lesser charges he admitted to, and was set to be sentenced after the end of Ritchie's trial.[15][16] Michael Moody, who was also involved in the theft of the van, was convicted of auto theft and carrying an unlicensed handgun, and faced the maximum punishment of four years' jail.[17][18]
A month before the trial of Ritchie began, his lawyers appealed to the state courts and argued that Ritchie should not be put to death. This motion was filed in light of Ring v. Arizona, a 2002 landmark ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled that juries, not judges, can only sentence offenders to death. Ritchie's lawyers submitted that the death penalty should be taken off the table in their client's case and claimed that the death penalty statutes of Indiana were unconstitutional for enabling judges the right to impose death sentences via judicial override when a jury remains undecided on sentence.[19] Subsequently, Marion County judge Patricia Gifford ruled that this aspect of Indiana's capital punishment laws was unconstitutional but did not dispute the general constitutionality of the death penalty as a whole, and allowed the death penalty to remain available as a sentencing option in Ritchie's trial, stating that a defendant's right to a fair trial could still be protected.[20]
Conviction and sentencing
On August 5, 2002, Ritchie officially stood trial before a jury at the Marion County Superior Court,[21] with jury selection taking place beforehand on July 31, 2002.[22] The pre-trial gag order issued in Ritchie's case expired on the first day of the trial.[23][24] Greer appeared in court on the second day of Ritchie's trial and testified against Ritchie, who was said to be afraid of going back to prison, given that he was still under probation after completing a two-year sentence for burglary, and any re-capture for further offences would mean the possibility of an additional eight years' jail for Ritchie.[16][6]
On August 10, 2002, the jury found Ritchie guilty of the murder of Officer William Toney, as well as auto theft, carrying an unlicensed firearm and resisting arrest. Officer Toney's widow reportedly received the verdict well and wanted Ritchie to be executed for murdering her late husband.[25][26] In their arguments against the death penalty, the defence argued that the Ritchie suffered from mental disabilities caused by a past head injury or his mother's pre-natal substance abuse, and his tragic upbringing and condition were not his voluntary life choices and he thus deserved judicial mercy. The prosecution, however, refuted that no amount of suffering Ritchie went through could be an excuse to his abhorrent actions and added that there were many more people who shared similar traumatic experiences as Ritchie but did not grow up to become cop killers.[6]
On August 14, 2002, the jury returned with their verdict on sentence after more than three hours of deliberation, unanimously sentencing Ritchie to death for the most serious charge of murder, a sentence that Toney's widow described as honoring the lives of her late husband and many more police officers who protected the public with their lives on the line. Ritchie reportedly laughed at the verdict.[27][28]
On October 15, 2002, 22-year-old Benjamin Donnie Ritchie was formally sentenced to death by Marion County Superior Court Judge Patricia Gifford. Prior to Ritchie's sentencing, Officer Toney's widow was allowed to give a victim impact statement, and she addressed Ritchie in court that she knew he was not sorry for his actions and he was a coward for killing her husband, hoping that he would be miserable for the rest of his life in prison until his execution.[29]
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Death row
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After he was first condemned to death row in 2002, Benjamin Ritchie was incarcerated at the Indiana State Prison, the state's designated facility for male death row inmates. A January 2014 report revealed that Ritchie was one of the 11 death row inmates awaiting execution in Indiana.[30] The death row population in Indiana later fell to eight in July 2020, with Ritchie being one of them.[31]
In 2024, it was revealed that during his incarceration, Ritchie had entered a four-year relationship with a Swedish woman, who reportedly fell in love with Ritchie after first seeing him in a crime documentary and even travelled to the United States to visit him. According to Ritchie's former girlfriend, there was a secret plan for them to ensure Ritchie's escape from prison but it was aborted as Ritchie did not want his then girlfriend to risk her life. After the end of her relationship with Ritchie, the woman turned to drugs for a period of time before she moved on and became a mother to one daughter.[32]
Appeal process
On May 25, 2004, the Indiana Supreme Court rejected Ritchie's direct appeal against his death sentence.[8][33]
On November 8, 2007, the Indiana Supreme Court rejected Ritchie's second appeal. In his appeal, Ritchie alleged that he received ineffective legal representation.[5]
On April 17, 2017, the U.S. Supreme Court dismissed Ritchie's final appeal.[34]
Death warrant
Scheduling of execution date
On September 27, 2024, the Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita filed a motion to the Indiana Supreme Court to schedule an execution date for Benjamin Ritchie. The application was submitted just two weeks after Joseph Corcoran—a convicted mass murderer and fellow death row inmate from Indiana—was assigned an execution date of December 18, 2024.[35] At the time, Ritchie was the second inmate in line for imminent execution in the state. Indiana's death row housed only eight individuals then, and four of them, including both Corcoran and Ritchie, had exhausted all available appeals.[36] The court also set dates for both sides to file submissions.[37] In response to the pending death warrant, Ritchie's counsel argued that he was represented by ineffective legal counsel back then during the original trial, his trial lawyers failed to investigate whether Ritchie suffered from fetal alcohol spectrum disorders as well as childhood lead exposure.[38]
After she was notified of the state's execution date application, Officer William Toney's widow Dee Dee Horen commented to a newspaper that she had waited 24 years for justice to be served and while she felt neither joy nor happiness over this matter, she agreed with executing Ritchie and stated that if the death sentence was not carried out after being imposed, it undervalued the lives of the murder victims, particularly the police officers who were feloniously murdered while carrying out their duties. As of June 2024, Ritchie was the only death row inmate in Indiana convicted of murdering a law enforcement officer, and two more individuals were pending trial for such crimes, with both facing the possibility of capital punishment.[39]
While legal proceedings over Ritchie's pending death warrant were still underway, Indiana authorities proceeded with the execution of Corcoran by lethal injection on December 18, 2024—officially ending the state's 15-year moratorium on capital punishment,[40][41] which was caused by the state's lack of drug supplies to facilitate lethal injection executions and the refusal of drug manufacturers to sell their products for the purposes of carrying out death sentences.[42][43]
2025 death warrant
On April 15, 2025, after hearing the case for seven months, the Indiana Supreme Court rejected Ritchie's motion for post-conviction relief and by a divided ruling, also scheduled an execution date for Ritchie, ordering his death sentence to be carried out before dawn on May 20, 2025.[44][45]
In a written decision penned by Chief Justice Loretta Rush, Justice Geoffrey G. Slaughter cited in the majority judgement that their assessment of further evidence of Ritchie's cognitive impairments concluded that they would not have affected the decision of the jury. However, Rush dissented in the decision, citing that there was possibility of Ritchie suffering from fetal alcohol spectrum disorder when he committed his crimes, and it should be determined whether Ritchie was denied effective legal representation before a date of execution could be set.[46]
Clemency hearing
On April 28, 2025, two clemency hearings were scheduled for Ritchie on May 5 and May 12, 2025, respectively. Ritchie had signed a clemency petition dated April 22, 2025, and submitted it to the state parole board. Under Indiana state law, the Indiana governor had the right to refuse or grant clemency after deliberating the state parole board's recommendation.[47]
On May 5, 2025, at the first hearing before a five-member panel of the Indiana's Parole Board, Ritchie expressed remorse for his crime and apologized for the murder of William Toney, and stated that he was no longer the same person that killed the late officer in cold blood, and he wanted to make good use of his second chance if his death sentence was reduced to life imprisonment.[48]
On May 12, 2025, a second clemency hearing was held before the board, and during the session, family members and friends of the murdered officer William Toney urged the board to refuse clemency for Ritchie and conduct his execution as originally scheduled.[49]
On May 14, 2025, the board denied Ritchie's request to commute his sentence to life imprisonment, and Indiana Governor Mike Braun likewise declined to grant clemency in accordance with the board's decision.[50]
U.S. Supreme Court appeal
Apart from his clemency petitions, Ritchie also appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court to delay his execution.[51]
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Aftermath
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In the aftermath, family members, friends, neighbors, and more than 600 officers (including Beech Grove Police Chief Michael Curran) attended the funeral of Officer William Toney, who was laid to rest at the Washington Park East Cemetery.[52] The police officers involved in the investigation of Officer William Toney's murder were all commended and awarded for their efforts to crack the case.[53]
In October 2000, several Papa John's Pizza restaurants set up a donation fund for the children of Officer Toney, with each restaurant contributing 5% of their profits to the fund.[54] In November 2000, a benefit concert was held by local singers and bands to help the bereaved kin of Officer Toney.[55] That same month, a local businessman also donated $1,000 to Officer Toney's family.[56] In March 2001, a special party event was conducted on St. Patrick's Day as a gesture to raise donations to Officer Toney's widow and daughters.[57]
In 2013, Ritchie appeared in a crime documentary titled Inside Death Row. The show, hosted by British journalist Sir Trevor McDonald, covered the lives of prisoners on death row in Indiana, including Ritchie.[4] This show was followed by a second season of the documentary in 2018, in which Ritchie would re-appear.[4][58] Reportedly, Officer Toney's widow Dee Dee Toney, who remarried a family friend of her first husband and later had a son, was upset about the filming of the 2018 documentary and upcoming media appearances of Ritchie. She expressed that she had forgiven him as a Christian, but maintained her support for capital punishment and she wanted Ritchie to be executed. It was revealed that Dee Dee, who took on the surname Horen after her second marriage, maintained regular contact with Officer Toney's surviving relatives and continued to honor his memory with an annual cornhole tournament.[59]
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See also
References
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