Michael Howie

MICHIGAN CITY — The man who pleaded guilty to the 2001 rape and murder of a 15-year-old girl in downstate Spencer County is scheduled to be executed by the State of Indiana Friday before sunrise as a decades-long legal fight comes to an end.

Barring any highly unlikely last-minute legal intervention, Roy Lee Ward, 53, will be strapped to a chair early Friday morning and injected with the drug pentobarbital that will cause him to stop breathing and die.

A brutal murder, a small town, and a long legal battle

On July 11, 2001, Ward walked into the Dale, Indiana, home of 15-year-old Stacy Payne and raped her, beat her with a dumbbell and stabbed her with a knife, according to court documents from the case. She was flown to a hospital in Louisville, where she died five hours a

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