Benny Lee Hodge was convicted of three murders committed in eastern Kentucky in the summer of 1985, in two separate events. On June 16, 1985, Edwin and Bessie Morris died in Gray Hawk, in Jackson County. On August 8, 1985, Tammy Dee Acker died in Fleming-Neon, in Letcher County, and her father survived. Hodge acted with Roger Epperson and Donald Bartley, and in each event money was the purpose. Juries in Letcher County in 1986 and in Laurel County in 1996 convicted him and recommended death, and the trial courts imposed it both times.
The cases have stayed in the courts for four decades. The Kentucky Supreme Court ruled on them in 1990, 2000, 2001, 2003, 2011 and 2020. The U.S. Supreme Court declined review in 1992 and in 2012, with Justice Sonia Sotomayor dissenting from the second denial, and again on January 12, 2026. In 2025 the full U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, sitting en banc, upheld his Acker sentence by a vote of 14 to 4.
Hodge was born on August 9, 1951. The court filings describe a childhood marked by severe abuse, time in juvenile detention, and later convictions for burglary, grand larceny and armed robbery, together with escapes and a felonious assault in Tennessee. Post-conviction filings relied on psychologists who concluded that the abuse had probably caused post-traumatic stress disorder.
Edwin and Bessie Morris died in Gray Hawk, in Jackson County, on June 16, 1985. The Kentucky Supreme Court later described the event as a robbery in which Hodge, Epperson and Bartley took part. Charges of murder, burglary and robbery followed.
On August 8, 1985, Tammy Dee Acker died in Fleming-Neon, Letcher County, in a robbery committed by Hodge, Epperson and Bartley. Her father survived. The Sixth Circuit's 2025 opinion records that the three men planned the offense together and that Hodge caused Tammy Acker's death. FBI agents arrested the three men in Florida; Hodge's arrest date was August 15, 1985.
A Letcher County grand jury indicted the three men for murder, attempted murder, first-degree robbery and first-degree burglary. Bartley agreed to testify for the Commonwealth and was separated from the trial. Hodge and Epperson were tried together before Circuit Judge F. Byrd Hogg in June 1986. The jury convicted Hodge on every count, recommended death for the murder of Tammy Acker and recommended 60 years for the other charges, and the court imposed those sentences on June 20, 1986.
At the penalty phase Hodge's counsel presented no mitigation evidence beyond a stipulation of two sentences about his family and work record. The prosecution called no further aggravation evidence. Later filings also showed that Epperson's lawyer, Lester Burns, was federally indicted in connection with the stolen money and that Hodge's lawyer, Dale Mitchell, had been Burns's associate.
The Morris case was moved on a change of venue from Jackson County to Laurel Circuit Court. Hodge was tried there in 1987, convicted and sentenced to death. The Commonwealth later confessed error because the jurors had not been questioned individually about pretrial publicity, and the convictions were vacated. A retrial in Laurel Circuit Court in 1996 produced the same result: Hodge was again convicted and sentenced to death, on November 22, 1996, according to the Kentucky Department of Corrections. Epperson was tried separately in Warren Circuit Court and convicted of complicity to murder, first-degree robbery and first-degree burglary.
The Kentucky Supreme Court affirmed the convictions and sentences on November 8, 1990, in Epperson v. Commonwealth, the joint appeal of the two men, and the U.S. Supreme Court denied certiorari in January 1992. Hodge then moved to vacate under Kentucky Rule of Criminal Procedure 11.42, and in 1998 the trial judge denied it. In 2001 the Kentucky Supreme Court reversed in part and sent the case back for hearings on two claims: that a juror or jurors had been tampered with, and that counsel had failed to present mitigation.
Judge Eddy Coleman of Pike County held the hearings in 2006 and 2007. He found no credible evidence of jury tampering. He found that counsel's investigation for the penalty phase had been deficient, a point the Commonwealth conceded, but ruled that Hodge had not shown prejudice. The Kentucky Supreme Court affirmed on August 25, 2011, concluding that there was no reasonable probability the jury would have chosen a different sentence, and describing the evidence of Hodge's abuse as offering virtually no rationale for the crime.
Justice Sotomayor dissented when the U.S. Supreme Court denied certiorari on December 3, 2012. She wrote that the Kentucky court had required mitigation evidence to explain the crime, which in her view was the wrong legal standard, and that the error could have changed the result. She would have vacated the judgment and returned the case to Kentucky.
Hodge filed a federal petition in the Eastern District of Kentucky on February 19, 2013, raising 29 claims, including conflicts of interest, severance, jury tampering and penalty-phase counsel. On August 17, 2016, Judge David L. Bunning denied the petition and certified three issues for appeal.
A divided Sixth Circuit panel affirmed in September 2021. After a reconstituted panel took the case, it filed a decision on February 22, 2024, that reversed and granted relief on the penalty-phase claim. The full court then took the case en banc, heard argument on October 30, 2024, and decided it on May 7, 2025. Judge John K. Bush wrote for a 14 to 4 majority that the Kentucky Supreme Court had not unreasonably applied the governing law, that the aggravating circumstances were weighty, and that the mitigation evidence had little connection to the crime. The court rejected the jury-tampering claim and held the conflict and juror-bias claims procedurally defaulted. Judge White, joined by Judges Moore, Clay and Stranch, concurred on tampering but dissented on the penalty phase.
Hodge's petition for certiorari, No. 25-6179, was filed on October 6, 2025. The Kentucky Attorney General filed a brief in opposition on December 9, 2025, and the Court denied the petition on January 12, 2026.
The Kentucky Supreme Court affirmed the Morris convictions and sentence in 2000, and in 2003 it affirmed the denial of a Rule 11.42 motion. The Eastern District of Kentucky denied federal habeas relief in 2006, and the Sixth Circuit affirmed in 2009 in Hodge v. Haeberlin.
In 2008 Hodge asked the Laurel Circuit Court to order further testing of evidence from the Morris case, arguing that the result might undermine Bartley's credibility as a witness. The court held the motion in abeyance pending a similar request in Epperson's case, took it up again in 2015 and denied it. On October 29, 2020, the Kentucky Supreme Court affirmed in an opinion by Justice VanMeter, writing that Hodge's arguments had been rejected by earlier state and federal rulings and that there was no reasonable probability the verdict or sentence would have been more favorable.
Hodge, now 75, is held under two death sentences in Kentucky. The Attorney General's office described him in December 2025 as remaining under sentence of death. In May 2025 Kentucky had not carried out an execution since November 2008, and a Franklin Circuit judge had ruled that the Attorney General's request to resume them was not ripe. No execution date has been set for him.
A Kentucky death sentence follows a fixed path. The case goes to the Kentucky Supreme Court on direct appeal, then to a state post-conviction motion under Rule 11.42, which tests the effectiveness of trial counsel and any jury misconduct. A prisoner may then petition a federal district court for habeas corpus, which the Sixth Circuit reviews. Under the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, a federal court may grant relief on a claim that a state court decided only if that decision was an unreasonable application of Supreme Court law. The 2025 en banc ruling in Hodge's case turned on that standard.
Roger Epperson's death sentence for the Acker murder was later reduced to life. The Kentucky Attorney General's petition for rehearing en banc stated that Hodge intended to use relief in the Acker case to challenge his Morris sentences as well.
Whether the penalty-phase failures changed the outcome is the central dispute, and judges split on it at every level: the 2011 Kentucky Supreme Court, Justice Sotomayor in 2012, the 2021 and 2024 panels, and the 14 to 4 en banc court. The trial judge found no credible evidence of jury tampering after the 2006 and 2007 hearings. The claims of conflicts of interest were held procedurally defaulted rather than decided on the merits.
August 9, 1951: Benny Lee Hodge born.
June 16, 1985: Edwin and Bessie Morris die in Gray Hawk, Jackson County.
August 8, 1985: Tammy Dee Acker dies in Fleming-Neon, Letcher County.
August 15, 1985: Hodge arrested in Florida.
June 1986: Hodge and Epperson convicted in Letcher Circuit Court.
June 20, 1986: Hodge sentenced to death and to 60 years.
1987: First Morris trial in Laurel Circuit Court; conviction later vacated.
November 8, 1990: Kentucky Supreme Court affirms the Acker convictions.
January 1992: U.S. Supreme Court denies certiorari.
November 22, 1996: Second death sentence after Morris retrial.
2000: Kentucky Supreme Court affirms the Morris convictions.
2001: Kentucky Supreme Court orders hearings on Acker post-conviction claims.
2009: Sixth Circuit affirms denial of habeas relief on the Morris case.
August 25, 2011: Kentucky Supreme Court affirms denial of relief on the Acker case.
December 3, 2012: Certiorari denied; Justice Sotomayor dissents.
August 17, 2016: Federal district court denies the Acker habeas petition.
October 29, 2020: Kentucky Supreme Court affirms denial of further testing in the Morris case.
February 22, 2024: Sixth Circuit panel grants relief.
May 7, 2025: Sixth Circuit en banc affirms denial, 14 to 4.
January 12, 2026: U.S. Supreme Court denies certiorari in No. 25-6179.