A death -torn apostate for the rape and murder of a teenager in 2001 was executed today with a deadly injection in Indiana, according to state judicial authorities.

Roy Ward, 53, sentenced to the murder and rape of 15 -year -old Stacey Payne in 2002, was executed in the early hours of Friday (08:00 Greek time) at a prison store in Michigan City.

Joanna Greene’s lawyer had pointed out a few days ago that Ward has “regretted a lot” of the crime he committed.

This is the third execution in Indiana since 2024 and the second since the beginning of the year.

Indiana started executions again last year after 15 years during which he had suspended them as he could not obtain the necessary medicinal products because of the reservations of companies who did not want to be linked to the death penalty.

However, from 2020 to 2021, in the last months of Donald Trump’s first term in the US presidency, 13 federal executions were held in the state.

New record of executions within one year

Ward’s execution is the 35th in the US since the beginning of the year, equaling the record recorded in 2014.

The vast majority of these executions (28) were carried out using fatal injection.

Four executions were made by nitrogen inhalation, a method used for the first time worldwide in Alabama in 2024 and which the UN has compared in the form of a “torture”. Two executions were carried out with an executive excerpt in South Carolina for the first time since 2010.

Twenty -three of the 50 US states have abolished the death penalty. Three others – Oregon, California and Pennsylvania – have imposed a moratorium on executions following a decision by their ruler.

Already on the first day of his second term, Trump called for the extension of the use of the penalties “for the most heinous crimes”.