Circuit court grants stay of execution for Indiana Death Row inmate Michael Lambert

By Mary Ann Wyand

Indiana Death Row inmate Michael Allen Lambert, who was convicted of killing a Muncie police officer in December 1990, was granted a stay of execution on June 17 by the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to allow time to review legal discrepancies in his trial and questions about his sentencing hearing.

The 34-year-old Lambert was scheduled to be executed by chemical injection at 12:01 a.m. on June 22 at the Indiana State Prison in Michigan City, Ind.

His fate remained uncertain until early afternoon on June 21 due to the pending status of his attorneys’ legal appeal seeking to grant him at least a temporary stay of execution.

Lambert was convicted of shooting Muncie Police Officer Gregg Winters five times in the back of his head on Dec. 28, 1990, while he was handcuffed in the back of a police car.

Winters had arrested Lambert for public intoxication following a traffic accident and was transporting him to the jail at the time of the shooting. He died 11 days later.

Lambert said during his trial that he was drunk at the time of the shooting and did not realize what he had done until his mother told him about it the next day.

His capital sentence was decided by a judge rather than a jury, and a newer state law may affect the legality of his sentencing procedure.

At the time of the federal circuit court’s ruling last Friday, Indiana Parole Board members were hearing testimony from the public about Lambert’s capital case and appeal in an assembly room at the Indiana Government Center in Indianapolis.

During a break in the parole board hearing, Molly Winters told The Criterion that she has forgiven Lambert for killing her husband, but still believes that justice should be served and he should be executed for his crime.

“It’s a very overwhelming process,” Winters said of the death of her husband and the subsequent trial. She raised their now teenage sons, Kyle and Brock, as a single parent.

“That anger and that pain is a part of your life,” Winters said. “When I went to meet with Michael Lambert [at the Indiana State Prison], I went in there still with every ounce of hatred inside of me that I had from day one.

“In the process of talking to him though,” she said, “and finding out answers to questions I needed, and having him tell me what he needed to say to me, there was just a calming effect that came over me. It very much was the grace of God being with me.”

Winters said she asked Lambert, “Where are you with God because you don’t need my forgiveness? When you die, you don’t stand in front of me for judgment, you stand in front of God, and where are you with God?”

She said Lambert “told me he was good. He believed in God. He accepted God. He knew his punishment was going to be death, and he was ready to accept that.

“We talked for a while longer,” Winters said, “… and there was this calming effect that came over me, and something inside just made me look him in the eye and tell him, ‘I forgive you for what you’ve done to me and my family. I’ll never forget, but I do forgive you. But I do still expect you to pay for your punishment, and that punishment being you will pay with your life.’ ”

Winters said she wishes her sons could have celebrated Father’s Day and other holidays with their father during their childhood years.

Seventeen-year-old Kyle Winters will be a senior at Greenfield Central High School in Greenfield and plans to major in forensic accounting at Indiana University in Bloomington so he can help law enforcement personnel solve crimes.

“Lambert owned up to his crime,” Kyle said after the Indiana Parole Board hearing on June 17, “which I thought was good because many people don’t do that. He said he did it, … that he was willing to give his life, and also that he was ready to die and that he knew that his time was
coming.”

The Catholic Church teaches that life in prison without parole is an appropriate punishment in capital cases. In March, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops announced a new educational campaign to end the use of the death penalty. †