As Indiana death row inmate Michael Allen Lambert’s clemen­cy hear­ing was under­way, a fed­er­al court stayed his sched­uled June 22 exe­cu­tion in order to con­sid­er if his death sen­tence was con­sti­tu­tion­al in light of the U.S. Supreme Court’s rul­ing in Ring v. Arizona regard­ing the jury’s role in death sen­tenc­ing.

During Lambert’s tri­al in 1992, a judge allowed the vic­tim’s wife to give an impact state­ment to the jury, which then rec­om­mend­ed that Lambert receive the death penal­ty. Four years lat­er, the Indiana Supreme Court ruled that this ​“high­ly emo­tion­al” tes­ti­mo­ny unfair­ly influ­enced the jury, but instead of order­ing a new sen­tenc­ing hear­ing for Lambert, the judges reweighed the evi­dence on their own and upheld the sen­tence. ​“Michael Lambert is the only per­son on death row whose death sen­tence was affirmed after an appel­late court found that his jury rec­om­men­da­tion was taint­ed. Without a valid jury rec­om­men­da­tion, he should not be exe­cut­ed,” said Paula Sites of the Indiana Public Defender Council. 

This is the first time a per­son on death row in Indiana has had his exe­cu­tion post­poned in the mid­dle of his clemen­cy hear­ing. There are 21 men on Indiana’s death row, and Lambert is one of two whose sen­tence was not decid­ed by a jury. (Indianapolis Star, June 18, 2005). See DPIC’s Web page about Ring v. Arizona.

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