WASHINGTON, DC — A man at the supermax prison in Florence who has been charged with killing another inmate may face the death penalty, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) said on Thursday.
According to court documents, Ishmael Petty, 56, murdered a fellow inmate on Sept. 19, 2020 while they were housed in the same unit at the U.S. Penitentiary Florence Administrative Maximum Facility (ADX) in Florence, also known as the supermax prison. The other inmate was only identified as L.H. in an indictment.
This week, a federal grand jury returned a two-count indictment against Petty for both first-degree murder and murder by a federal prisoner serving a life sentence, the DOJ said. The maximum penalty for this is death.
Petty had been in federal custody since 1998, when he was convicted for an elaborate armed bank robbery in Mississippi in which he dressed as a police officer, the Department of Justice (DOJ) said. He was sentenced to 420 months in federal prison. Later, in 2002, he was sentenced to life in prison, after he murdered his 71-year-old cellmate at a federal prison in Louisiana. In addition, he was sentenced to 60 years in prison after he assaulted two federal officers at ADX in 2015.
Related to the 2020 case, Attorney General Bondi authorized the United States Attorney for the District of Colorado to pursue capital punishment in this case, the DOJ said, adding that the U.S. Attorney filed a notice of intent to seek the death penalty against Petty.
You can read the notice of intent to see the death penalty in the document below.
While the death penalty was repealed in 2020 in Colorado with the signing of Senate Bill 20-100, if a defendant is convicted at the federal level of first-degree murder, they can face lethal injection. That charge is one of several federal crimes punishable by death, according to the Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC).
The federal death penalty applies to every state, but according to the DPIC, it is used relatively rarely. It reports that 16 people have been executed under the federal death penalty since 1988.
If Petty is put to death in Colorado in connection with the federal crimes against him, it would mark the first execution in the state since the death penalty was repealed in 2020.
However, according to 18 U.S. Code § 3596 (Implementation of a sentence of death), if a federal crime happens in a state that does not have the death penalty, a judge can designate another state — where the death penalty is in place — for the execution to take place. In January 2021, the Trump administration carried out its 13th federal execution since July 2020. Those 13 individuals committed the crimes in various states, but all of the executions took place at USP Terre Haute in Indiana, according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons.
Colorado had abolished the death penalty in 1897 before reinstating it in 1901. The U.S. Supreme Court struck down existing death penalty standards in 1972, and the state reintroduced capitol punishment in 1975, according to DPIC. It was then abolished in 2020.
Between 1975 and 2020, the state executed just one person — Gary Lee Davis in 1997. Davis had been convicted of kidnapping, sexual assault and murder.
