Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca7-16-01001/USCOURTS-ca7-16-01001-0/pdf.json

Nature of Suit Code: 535
Nature of Suit: Habeas Corpus - Death Penalty
Cause of Action: 

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In the 

United States Court of Appeals 

For the Seventh Circuit ____________________   

No. 16‐1001

ROY L. WARD,

Petitioner‐Appellant,

v.

RON NEAL, Superintendent,

Indiana State Prison,

Respondent‐Appellee.

____________________

Appeal from the United States District Court for the

Southern District of Indiana, Evansville Division.

No. 3:12‐cv‐00192‐RLY‐WGH — Richard L. Young, Chief Judge.

____________________

ARGUED AUGUST 18, 2016 — DECIDED AUGUST 26, 2016

____________________

Before WOOD, Chief Judge, and EASTERBROOK and ROVNER,

Circuit Judges.

WOOD, Chief Judge. Roy L. Ward is under a sentence of

death for the brutal murder of Stacy Payne, just 15 years old

at the time of the crime. He pleaded guilty to the charge at his

second trial; a jury recommended death; and the trial court

sentenced him accordingly. His conviction and sentence have

passed muster through all the appropriate stages of review in

Case: 16-1001 Document: 34 Filed: 08/26/2016 Pages: 11
2 No. 16‐1001

the state courts, and the district court found no reason to dis‐

turb their conclusions when Ward sought a writ of habeas cor‐

pus pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 2254. His primary ground for re‐

lief, and the only theory he pursues on appeal, is that his trial

counsel rendered constitutionally ineffective assistance when

they portrayed him as a dangerous, incurable “psychopath”

to the jury, and that this failing is enough to undermine confi‐

dence in the sentence. We conclude, however, that the Indiana

Supreme Court’s decision that Ward suffered no prejudice

from counsel’s shortcomings was reasonable. This is enough

to require us to affirm the district court’s judgment denying

the petition for a writ of habeas corpus.

I

We will be brief with the underlying facts, as most of them

are not disputed and they are horrifying. Shortly after noon

on July 11, 2001, 15‐year‐old Stacy Payne opened the front

door of her home in Dale, Indiana, and found a stranger—

Ward—ostensibly looking for a lost dog. Ward was lying.

Shortly after Stacy let him in, her sister Melissa, who had been

upstairs taking a nap, woke to the sound of screams. Looking

down from the top of the stairs, she saw Stacy on the ground

with a man on top of her. Stacy was screaming as the man as‐

saulted her. Melissa promptly went to her parents’ room and

called 911; police arrived about ten minutes later.

Dale Town Marshal Matt Keller was the first to enter the

house. He saw Ward standing near the door with a knife in

his hand, sweating. Keller immediately took Ward into cus‐

tody, moved Ward outside, and went back into the house.

There he saw Stacy lying in a huge pool of blood in the

kitchen, disemboweled, evidently raped, trying to speak. Kel‐

ler watched over her while he waited for an ambulance. The

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No. 16‐1001 3

Emergency Medical Technicians did what they could to stabi‐

lize her for transport and took her to a local hospital, from

which she was later moved by helicopter to a Level One

trauma center in Louisville. Doctors there tried to save her,

but to no avail; she died approximately four orfive hours after

the attack. Although her wounds were awful—her throat was

severed to the back of her windpipe, her midsection was al‐

most completely cut apart, and her left hand had been slashed

to the bone—she was still able for some time to communicate

with the nurses by squeezing her hand.

There was never any doubt that Ward was the person who

had murdered Stacy so violently. The proceedings focused in‐

stead on the penalty that he should receive. He was first in‐

dicted and tried on capital charges in Spencer County, Indi‐

ana, where Dale is located. Ward’s attorneys at this trial tried

through the use of mitigating evidence to convince the jury

that death was not appropriate. They introduced evidence of

Ward’s troubled upbringing, his difficulties in school, his psy‐

chological problems, his obsession with exposing himself (for

which he had some 32 convictions), and his previous good

deeds. That strategy failed. The Spencer County jury con‐

victed him and recommended death, and the trial judge ac‐

cepted its advice. On appeal to the Indiana Supreme Court,

however, his conviction and sentence were vacated, because

the court found that he had been denied his right to a fair trial

when his motion for a change of venue was denied. A fair trial

in Spencer County, it said, would have been impossible. Ward

v. State (Ward I), 810 N.E.2d 1042, 1050 (Ind. 2004).  

We are concerned with Ward’s second trial, at which he

was represented by attorneys Lorinda Youngcourt and Steven

Ripstra. They had handled his appeal to the Indiana Supreme

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4 No. 16‐1001

Court and were thus familiar with his case. The judge for the

new trial was Robert J. Pigman, an appointed special judge;

the trial was conducted in the Vanderburgh County Superior

Court, with a jury venire drawn from Clay County. After the

trial court denied Ward’s motion to dismiss the state’s request

forthe death penalty, he pleaded guilty to murder and Class A

felony rape, and the state agreed to dismiss the charge of

criminal deviate conduct (which supported one aggravating

circumstance for purposes of the death penalty). Ward re‐

quested a jury for his penalty trial.

Although Youngcourt in particular was an experienced

criminal defense lawyer who had handled numerous capital

cases, she was quite overextended when she undertook to

represent Ward at his second trial. Two of her clients had

“real” execution dates, which she was trying to have set aside.

Another client was under a federal sentence of death and

Youngcourt was handling his motion under 28 U.S.C. § 2255.

Finally, she was in the early stage of preparing for two addi‐

tional capital trials. Perhaps that is why she exercised such

poor oversight over a social worker, Micki Delph Rushton,

whom she had hired to develop mitigation evidence. They

had counted on using materials that had been developed for

the first trial, but the file turned out to be very thin, and they

concluded that they needed to start from scratch.  

Rushton did very little on the case, though she ultimately

completed 12 comprehensive witness interviews out of some

45 that Youngcourt wanted. (Most of the people on this list

had knowledge of Ward’s convictions for exposing himself.)

Youngcourt was able to secure a continuance of the trial,

which had been set for October 2006. In January 2007 there

was a conference to set a new trial date. Youngcourt asked for

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No. 16‐1001 5

a year, but the court gave her only until May 7, 2007.

Youngcourt describes her state of readiness for that trial as

“zero.” It then turned out that Rushton’s life was “falling

apart” and that she had “a bad drinking problem.”  

Youngcourt filed several other motions for continuances,

but the court denied them. She retained other witnesses, in‐

cluding a mitigation investigator who abandoned the case af‐

ter one day. She also retained a mental health consultant, Dr.

George Parker, but he did not meet Ward until the end of

March. She eventually also hired Dr. Alan Friedman, who was

supposed to conduct neuropsychological testing but did not.

He did, however, interview Ward during three visits to the

prison, and he reviewed substantial materials that

Youngcourt had furnished. Ultimately, the defense team de‐

cided not to stress mitigation, but instead to emphasize

Ward’s serious psychological problems. Dr. Friedman thought

that Ward was a “psychopath,” and Dr. Parker agreed.  

That was what the jury heard at the penalty trial, which

began on May 9, 2007. It also heard Dr. Friedman’s opinion

that Ward should never be “on the streets” because he was

born without a conscience. James E. Aiken, a former Commis‐

sioner of the Indiana Department of Correction, testified that

Indiana had the ability safely to incarcerate a psychopath such

as Ward. Drs. Friedman and Parker, unhelpfully for Ward,

thought that he would be more dangerous than the average

prisoner, and Dr. Parker opined that Ward might be a threat

to someone in the prison who was smaller or weaker than

himself, or perhaps someone whom Ward caught in a mo‐

ment when Ward had the upper hand.  

The lawyers also introduced mitigating evidence at the

second trial; witnesses discussed his bad parental modeling

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6 No. 16‐1001

(his father was also an exhibitionist), his attention deficit hy‐

peractivity disorder, his learning difficulties, his depression,

and his psychopathy. Counsel did not have much material

that they could use to humanize Ward, but they tried none‐

theless to introduce what they could. As we noted, the jury

recommended death; the trial court accepted that recommen‐

dation; and it sentenced Ward to death on June 8, 2007. The

Indiana Supreme Court affirmed on direct appeal from the

second trial. Ward v. State (Ward II), 903 N.E.2d 946 (Ind. 2009).

Ward sought post‐conviction relief in the state court, but the

trial court denied his petition after an evidentiary hearing,

and the Indiana Supreme Court again affirmed. Ward v. State

(Ward III), 969 N.E.2d 46 (Ind. 2012). Ward then filed his peti‐

tion under 28 U.S.C. § 2254, which the district court denied,

paving the way for this appeal.

II

The sole issue Ward presents is “[w]hether trial counsel

were ineffective when they failed to adequately investigate

and present readily available mitigating evidence; and, due to

their lack of preparation, instead presented Ward as a danger‐

ous, incurable, remorseless ‘psychopath.’” As the Indiana Su‐

preme Court recognized in Ward III, this claim must be ana‐

lyzed “under the two‐part test announced in Strickland v.

Washington, 466 U.S. 668 (1984).” Ward III, 969 N.E.2d at 51.

Strickland, as the state supreme court went on to recognize,

requires a petitioner to show two things in order to prove a

Sixth Amendment violation: first, that counsel’s performance

was deficient, by showing that “counsel made errors so seri‐

ous that counsel was not functioning as the ‘counsel’ guaran‐

teed the defendant by the Sixth Amendment,”; and second,

that “the deficient performance prejudiced the defense,” by

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No. 16‐1001 7

depriving the defendant of a trial whose result is reliable.

466 U.S. at 687

Strickland left no doubt that these are two independent,

and equally essential, requirements for the petitioner. Its com‐

ments on this point are helpful in the present case:

Although we have discussed the performance

component of an ineffectiveness claim prior to

the prejudice component, there is no reason for

a court deciding an ineffective assistance claim

to approach the inquiry in the same order or

even to address both components of the inquiry

if the defendant makes an insufficient showing

on one. In particular, a court need not determine

whether counsel’s performance was deficient

before examining the prejudice suffered by the

defendant as a result of the alleged deficiencies.

The object of an ineffectiveness claim is not to

grade counsel’s performance. If it is easierto dis‐

pose of an ineffectiveness claim on the ground

of lack of sufficient prejudice, which we expect

will often be so, that course should be followed.  

Id. at 697.  

We find that this is one of those cases that is easier to re‐

solve on prejudice, and so we turn immediately to that point.

Ward has something to say about it, although he spent most

of his brief detailing the many ways in which he believes that

the performance of his trial lawyers was deficient. Only at

page 48 out of 53 does he turn to the Indiana Supreme Court’s

finding that whatever errors counsel made, and however de‐

ficient the additional evidence gathered at the post‐conviction

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8 No. 16‐1001

stage may have shown them to be, he cannot show prejudice,

as Strickland uses that term. See Ward III, 969 N.E.2d at 67.

The Supreme Court’s test for prejudice is a familiar one to

those who spend any time with habeas corpus cases:

The defendant must show that there is a reason‐

able probability that, but for counsel’s unprofes‐

sional errors, the result of the proceeding would

have been different. A reasonable probability is

a probability sufficient to undermine confi‐

dence in the outcome.

Strickland, 466 U.S. at 694. Applying this test, the Indiana Su‐

preme Court wrote that:  

After weighing the totality of the mitigating ev‐

idence [including that produced at post‐convic‐

tion] against the evidence in aggravation, we

conclude that Ward was not prejudiced by any

inadequacies in his trial counsel’s performance

... There is no reasonable probability that the

additional evidence presented at the PC hearing

would have changed the jury’s verdict.  

Ward III, 969 N.E.2d at 72.  

Under the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act

of 1996 (AEDPA), which amended 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d), we

must respect this finding of the state’s highest court unless the

state’s adjudication “resulted in a decision that was contrary

to, or involved an unreasonable application of, clearly estab‐

lished Federal law, as determined by the Supreme Court of

the United States.” 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d)(1). In making that de‐

termination, we do not assess the issues on our own; we de‐

cide only whether the state court either invoked the wrong

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No. 16‐1001 9

legal standard or applied the correct standard unreasonably.

Over and over, the Court has stressed that “an unreasonable

application of federal law is different from an incorrect appli‐

cation of federal law.” Harrington v. Richter, 562 U.S. 86, 101

(2011) (quoting Williams v. Taylor, 529 U.S. 362, 410 (2000)). The

Richter Court elaborated that “a state prisoner must show that

the state court’s ruling on the claim being presented in federal

court was so lacking in justification that there was an error

well understood and comprehended in existing law beyond

any possibility for fairminded disagreement.” 562 U.S. at 103.  

With that intentionally demanding statutory standard in

mind, even assuming that Ward’s attorneys performed defi‐

ciently when they pounded into the jury’s mind the idea that

Ward is a psychopath—not merely someone suffering from

severe antisocial personality disorder—we cannot say that the

state court’s conclusion that there was no prejudice was un‐

reasonable. First, the state court unquestionably turned to the

correct decision from the U.S. Supreme Court, and so there is

no issue of a decision “contrary to” established law. Nor can

we say that the Indiana Supreme Court unreasonably applied

Strickland. The lay mitigation evidence that Ward gathered for

the post‐conviction proceedings would have shown, if cred‐

ited, that he was a well‐behaved and thoughtful child, who

had an especially close relationship with his grandfather. It

would also have underscored Ward’s psychological problem

with exhibitionism, hinting if not proving that this was some‐

thing he either inherited from his father and grandfather, or

maybe copied from them (both had the same problem). This

evidence is not particularly strong, and it is largely cumula‐

tive of the mitigating evidence the second jury did hear.  

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10 No. 16‐1001

Counsel at oral argument disclaimed any intention to rest

Ward’s case exclusively on the use of the word “psychopath,”

rather than the phrase “severe antisocial personality disor‐

der.” At the same time, she argued that studies have shown

that juries have an especially negative reaction to the term

“psychopath,” and that it was appalling performance for

Ward’s attorneys to allow his experts to use the word. There

is no doubt that Ward’s lawyers faced a difficult choice: to por‐

tray Ward as somehow redeemable, and thus not deserving

of death, or to portray Ward as so mentally damaged that the

death penalty was inappropriate. The Indiana Supreme Court

thought that their choice was defensible, but as we said, we

do not need to reach the performance issue.  

The reason why a reasonable state court could find that

Ward was not prejudiced by his trial lawyers’ strategy is easy

to see. Against the mitigating evidence counsel did not use,

and the psychological labels that were used, stood a mountain

of stark evidence against Ward. He raped, tortured, and mur‐

dered an adolescent girl in an unbelievably brutal fashion.

From the time Marshal Keller found him standing near the

dying girl until the time of trial, Ward showed no remorse for

his actions. He has admitted that he feels no remorse, and the

jury undoubtedly observed his flat demeanor throughout the

trial. No one was presenting an argument based on Atkins v.

Virginia, 536 U.S. 304 (2002), that Ward was mentally retarded

and thus not eligible for the death penalty (the record indi‐

cates his IQ is 79). And it is premature to address any possible

argument under Ford v. Wainwright, 477 U.S. 399 (1986), that

it would violate the Eighth Amendment to carry out Ward’s

sentence, because of “insanity.”  

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No. 16‐1001 11

The jury thus was asked whether a sentence of death was

the proper one, in light of the presence of the aggravating cir‐

cumstance that Ward committed the murder by intentionally

killing the victim while committing rape, and the aggravating

circumstance that he tortured and mutilated the victim while

she was still alive. Finding no mitigating circumstances to

outweigh these facts, the jury said yes, the trial court agreed,

and their decisions were affirmed by the state supreme court.  

III

Applying the standards imposed by AEDPA, we conclude

that the Indiana Supreme Court’s decision that Ward cannot

show prejudice from any deficient performance counsel may

have rendered was a reasonable application of clearly estab‐

lished law from the U.S. Supreme Court. His claim under

Strickland must therefore fail. We therefore AFFIRM the judg‐

ment of the district court denying Ward’s petition under 28

U.S.C. § 2254.  

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