Deacon: Death row inmate Michael Allen Lambert ‘ready’ for June 15 execution

By Mary Ann Wyand

Indiana death row inmate Michael Allen Lambert, who was convicted of killing a Muncie police officer in 1990, is scheduled to be executed by chemical injection on June 15 at the Indiana State Prison in Michigan City, Ind., unless Gov. Mitch Daniels intervenes this week.

During a June 8 hearing, three Indiana Parole Board members voted unanimously against recommending clemency for Lambert, which would have commuted his capital sentence to life in prison without parole. Two parole board members—who were appointed after Lambert’s first clemency hearing two years ago—abstained from voting last Friday.

Lambert, now 36, was arrested for

public intoxication on Dec. 28, 1990, in Muncie and was handcuffed in the back seat of a patrol car when he shot Officer Gregg Winters five times in his head.

Winters, a 32-year-old father of two young sons, 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.

During a break at Lambert’s parole board hearing on June 17, 2005, at the Indiana Government Center in Indianapolis, 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 and volunteers as an advocate for survivors of police officers killed in the line of duty.

Deacons Malcolm Lunsford and John Bacon, who minister in the Diocese of Gary, have prayed with Lambert on death row during the past seven years.

Deacon Lunsford said Lambert “grew up” on death row, has been a model prisoner, and is well-liked by the 19 other inmates, correctional staff members and even the pet cats at the prison.

“He’s a very nice young man,” Deacon Lunsford said. “He professed to be a Buddhist, but he appreciates us stopping by and praying with him. We always say the Our Father and he prays along with us. … All the guys on the row are going to miss him. … Even some of the hardest men up there are suffering because of Michael Lambert’s scheduled execution.”

The last time they talked, Deacon Lunsford said, Lambert told him, “ ‘If it happens, it happens. I’m ready.’ ”

Deacon Bacon planned to visit the death row inmates on June 12. He last spoke with Lambert on June 7, the day before the parole board hearing.

“I talked to him last Thursday because I had gone out there to do a Communion service on death row,” Deacon Bacon recalled. “One of the other deacons in our diocese, Mike Prendergast, who coordinates prison ministries in the

[Gary] diocese, told me that the Indiana Catholic Conference and the Indiana

bishops had submitted a letter in support of his clemency so I wanted to tell him that.

“He was having a contact visit with his family at that time,” Deacon Bacon said, “so I just took him off to the side for a couple of seconds to let him know that. He thanked me and wanted to express that he was grateful that they had taken that position and that the Church was supporting him. As I explained to him, our [Church’s] position is against capital

punishment in general.”

Deacon Bacon said most of the death row inmates have very little contact with family members or friends and appreciate visits by ministers.

“At the Communion service last week,” he said, “I told the guys on death row … that we have to live our lives in light of the fact that Jesus Christ died on a cross for all of us … and that we all have to accept that, to be thankful for it, and to try to live our lives in … an expression of thanks for the great sacrifice that Christ made for us by dying on the cross for our salvation.” †