Laughing Killer Gets Death For Murder of IN Officer

[Ken (NY]]

Laughing Killer Gets Death For Murder of IN Officer

Marion County, IN - 8/15/2002

Indianapolis Star
By Vic Ryckaert

Benjamin Ritchie laughed as the jury's death penalty verdict was read
in a Marion Superior Courtroom on Wednesday night.

He turned his head and smiled at his family, smiled at his attorneys
and smiled at the widow of the Beech Grove police officer he shot dead
two years ago.

"That cackle that you heard is the very voice of evil," Prosecutor
Scott Newman said, standing outside the courtroom. "He is just plain
mean."

It took the jury about 31/2 hours to agree that 22-year-old Ritchie
should die for the murder of Officer William Toney.

The officer left behind a wife and two daughters. Dee Dee Toney said
the death penalty ruling honors her husband and the thousands of law
enforcement officers who put their lives on the line to protect
others.

She said she will give her girls a kiss and tell them the person who
killed their dad will never hurt anyone else.

"We have justice," she said, crying and holding her husband's badge --
it had been considered evidence and was handed to her only after the
jury's work was finished.

Judge Patricia Gifford will formally hand down Ritchie's sentence at a
Sept. 20 hearing.

Under Indiana law, that sentence will be appealed automatically.

On Sept. 29, 2000, Ritchie jumped from behind the wheel of a stolen
van and ran. Toney chased him through back yards and over fences until
they came to a dead end behind a house in the 700 block of Fletcher
Lane.

Prosecutors say Ritchie took aim and fired at the officer; defense
attorneys say Ritchie fired blindly as he ran in fear.

Defense attorneys Kevin McShane and Jack Crawford say Ritchie should
be pitied, not executed. They begged jurors to opt for a sentence of
life in prison without parole, saying his deeply troubled childhood
and mental health problems contributed to his violent acts.

Defense attorneys say Ritchie's mental health problems began while he
was in the womb as his mother polluted her system with drugs and
alcohol.

Ritchie's 43-year-old mother, Marion Martin, admitted on the stand
that she abused alcohol and drugs, worked as a stripper and abandoned
her son twice before he was 3 years old.

"The rejection of Ben Ritchie by his mother was devastating," Crawford
wept as he spoke to jurors. "The damage was done. He was broken, and
they couldn't fix it."

A DNA test showed that Donald Peoples, the man married to Ritchie's
mother at the time of his birth, is not his biological father. Peoples
raised Ritchie's two brothers but left him to be raised by other
relatives. Martin said she does not know the identity of Ritchie's
real father.

But prosecutors say many people are raised under far more difficult
circumstances and never commit a violent act. They say no amount of
childhood suffering can make up for the blood on Ritchie's hands.

Ritchie was on probation for burglary and knew being caught would mean
going back to prison for eight years.

Prosecutors said Ritchie blasted four shots from a handgun as Toney
hopped over a fence. One bullet hit Toney just above his protective
vest, cutting an artery, puncturing a lung and crushing a vertebra. He
died in minutes.

"What mercy did the defendant show Officer Toney?" Newman asked
jurors. "Bill Toney is in the ground in a box. He has no life, and the
defendant should be required to forfeit a part of his life."

Ken (NY)
Chairman,
Department Of Redundancy Department
____________________________________

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