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.