FAULKNER COUNTY, Ark. — An Arkansas death row inmate is asking a Faulkner County judge to throw out his own final state appeal without a hearing, according to handwritten letters filed in Faulkner County Circuit Court and obtained by Arkansas Breaking News.
Scotty Ray Gardner, 65, was sentenced to death for the March 6, 2016, killing of his girlfriend, Susan Heather Stubbs, 41, in Conway. He is held on death row at the Arkansas Division of Correction’s Varner Unit.
In a letter to Circuit Judge Charles E. Clawson Jr. dated Dec. 16, 2025, and file-marked Jan. 9, 2026, Gardner wrote that he had read the state’s Nov. 24 response to his pending Rule 37 petition, the post-conviction filing that represents his last major challenge to his conviction and sentence in state court.
“After carefully reading the states [sic] response, I Scotty Ray Gardner SK985, the sole defendant in said petition willfully agrees [sic] with the state in asking this court to denie [sic] the petitioners [sic] Rule 37,” Gardner wrote. “For the record I ask this court to accept my agreement with the states [sic] response. Denie [sic] a hearing.”
“Further time in this court would be pointless,” he added. “I’m asking this court to dismiss the pending petition without a hearing.”
The request puts Gardner at odds with his own attorney and sets up a competency fight scheduled for later this summer.
A change in tone
Court records show Gardner’s position has shifted over the past year and a half.
In a letter dated Feb. 20, 2025, and filed with the court a week later, Gardner pressed Clawson to rule on his Rule 37 petition, not abandon it. He wrote that he had been transferred from death row on Oct. 31, 2024, and housed four days in the Faulkner County jail for a 15-minute hearing on the petition, and that both sides had agreed a ruling should be forthcoming.
“How long? Is this some kind of a joke?” the letter begins.
“Waiting 6 yrs. I have no say in your court. But this is life or death for me,” Gardner wrote. “However I do not expect to recieve [sic] a fair hearing nor do I expect justice in your court period.”
“All I want is a hearing so I can get on down the line with forced appeals,” he continued. “6 yrs is a miscarriage of justice. Come on.”
By September, according to previous reporting, Gardner’s letters had turned to ending the case entirely. “It’s simple,” he wrote in a letter dated Sept. 6. “Come on with it.”
Three months later, he asked Clawson to deny the petition outright.
Editor’s note: Quotes from Gardner’s letters are reproduced as written, with spelling and grammar errors noted.
Competency hearing set for August
Whether Gardner can legally walk away from his appeals is now the central question in the case.
His attorney, Lee D. Short of Little Rock, has noted in court filings that Gardner was previously found incompetent and has a documented history of psychosis and schizophrenia. Short has said publicly that his client’s push to end the case is a product of prison conditions he described as extremely toxic and dehumanizing.
Clawson has scheduled a hearing for Aug. 24 through 28 to determine whether Gardner is competent to waive his remaining appeals over his attorney’s advice.
Prosecutors, in a motion filed in the case, told the court Gardner has admitted to witnesses that he killed Stubbs and described how it happened in recorded phone calls.
What a waiver would mean
Gardner’s request carries weight beyond his own case.
Arkansas has not carried out an execution since April 2017, when the state put four men to death in a single week before its supply of lethal injection drugs expired. In March 2025, lawmakers and Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders approved Act 302, making Arkansas the fifth state to authorize execution by nitrogen gas. Ten death row inmates sued to block the law the day it took effect.
Under Arkansas law, the attorney general notifies the governor when a condemned inmate’s appeals are exhausted, and the governor then sets an execution date. If Gardner is found competent and his Rule 37 petition is dismissed, his path through the state courts would shorten considerably.
Gardner has also written directly to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, which reported this month that he called on Sanders to restart executions in Arkansas, beginning with his own.
Condemned inmates who volunteer for execution are rare. According to the Death Penalty Information Center, roughly 10 percent of the more than 1,600 executions carried out in the United States since 1976 involved defendants who waived their appeals. Four were in Arkansas: Ronald Gene Simmons, Alan Willett, Christina Riggs and Clay King Smith.
About two dozen people are currently on Arkansas death row.
The case
According to a probable cause affidavit filed by Conway police, a Days Inn clerk called 911 around 6 p.m. on March 6, 2016, after finding a woman dead in Room 114. Investigators identified her as Stubbs and determined a cord had been wrapped around her neck, causing her strangulation. The room had been rented in Gardner’s name since Feb. 21, and a family member told police Stubbs was last seen alive with Gardner in the room that afternoon.
Gardner was located in Hot Springs the next day and arrested. On March 8, according to the affidavit, he asked to speak with a Conway detective and, in a recorded interview after signing a rights waiver, admitted to the killing. He told the detective the two had argued, that Stubbs had previously filed a domestic battery report against him, and that he grabbed a nearby cord and wrapped it around her neck. “I might have killed her… I don’t know,” he told the detective, according to the affidavit. He said he left afterward and went gambling.
Prosecuting Attorney Cody Hiland’s office upgraded the charge to capital murder after the interview. The felony information, filed April 22, 2016, also alleged Gardner qualified as a habitual offender. He was convicted and sentenced to death, and his direct appeal to the Arkansas Supreme Court was filed in 2019 under case CR-19-257.
His Rule 37 petition, and now his request to abandon it, remain pending before the court.
Arkansas Breaking News obtained Gardner’s letters from the public court file in Faulkner County Circuit Court. This story will be updated following the August hearing.
Arkansas Division of Correction records show 23 men on death row, all housed at the Varner Unit. All were convicted of capital murder. Listed in order of sentencing date, according to ADC records.
Don W. Davis
Benton County | Sentenced 1992
Davis shot Jane Daniel with a .44 revolver he found in her Rogers home after breaking in during a 1990 burglary. He came within hours of execution in 2017 before a stay.
Jack G. Greene
Johnson County | Resentenced 1999
Greene was convicted in the 1991 torture killing of Sidney Jethro Burnett, a retired minister. He was scheduled for execution in November 2017 before a stay over mental competency.
Ray Dansby
Union County | Sentenced 1993
Dansby was convicted in the 1992 El Dorado shooting deaths of his ex-wife, Brenda Dansby, and her boyfriend, Ronnie Kimble.
Terrick T. Nooner
Pulaski County | Sentenced 1993
Nooner was convicted in the 1993 shooting death of Scot Stobaugh at a Little Rock laundromat.
Andrew Sasser
Miller County | Sentenced 1994
Sasser was convicted in the July 1993 killing of Jo Ann Kennedy, a clerk working alone overnight at the Garland City E-Z Mart. She died of multiple stab wounds and blunt-force injuries. Sasser had a prior 1988 conviction for battery, kidnapping and rape of a clerk at a Lewisville E-Z Mart. A federal judge ordered resentencing in 2018 over intellectual disability claims, though ADC still lists him on death row.
Stacey E. Johnson
Sevier County | Sentenced 1994
Johnson was convicted in the 1993 killing of Carol Heath in De Queen. He has long sought new DNA testing and was among eight inmates scheduled for execution in 2017 before receiving a stay.
Roderick L. Rankin
Jefferson County | Sentenced 1996
Rankin was convicted in the 1994 Pine Bluff shooting deaths of Ernestine Halford, Nathaniel Halford and Zena Reynolds, the mother, stepfather and sister of his ex-girlfriend. Sentenced at 19, he has long claimed his brother committed the killings.
Karl D. Roberts
Polk County | Sentenced 2000
Roberts was convicted in the 1999 rape and murder of his 12-year-old niece, Andria Brewer, near Mena. Roberts once waived his appeals and came within hours of execution in 2004 before changing his mind.
Kenneth Isom
Drew County | Sentenced 2001
Isom was convicted in the killing of elderly Monticello resident William Burton during a home invasion, along with the rape and beating of Burton’s companion.
Justin Anderson
Lafayette County | Sentenced 2002
Anderson was convicted in the 2000 shooting of Clara Creech, an elderly woman killed while picking greens in her yard in Lewisville.
Billy Thessing
Pulaski County | Sentenced 2004
Thessing was convicted in the 2003 beating and stabbing death of Mattie Basinger, 67, in her Little Rock home during a robbery. He took her car, television and Bible.
Mickey D. Thomas
Pike County | Sentenced 2005
Thomas was convicted in the June 2004 shooting deaths of Mona Lee Shelton, 46, of Grannis and Donna Marie Cary, 45, of Gillham at a grave marker business in De Queen.
Thomas Springs
Sebastian County | Sentenced 2005
Springs was convicted in the Jan. 21, 2005, killing of his estranged wife, Christina Springs. He rammed the car she was riding in at a Fort Smith intersection, then stabbed her to death through the passenger window. She died two days after filing for divorce.
Derek Sales
Ashley County | Sentenced 2007
Sales was convicted in the murder of Willie York in Ashley County.
Gregory Decay
Washington County | Sentenced 2008
Decay was convicted in the 2007 execution-style shootings of Kevin Jones and Kendall Rice in their Fayetteville apartment.
Zachariah Marcyniuk
Washington County | Sentenced 2008
Marcyniuk was convicted in the March 2008 killing of his ex-girlfriend, University of Arkansas student Katie Wood, in her Fayetteville apartment.
Brandon E. Lacy
Benton County | Sentenced 2009
Lacy was convicted in the 2007 killing of Randall Walker during a robbery at Walker’s home.
Jerry D. Lard
Greene County | Sentenced 2012
Lard was convicted in the 2011 shooting death of Trumann police officer Jonathan Schmidt during a traffic stop. The Arkansas Supreme Court ruled in 2020 that Lard was competent to drop his appeals.
Robert Holland
Lincoln County | Sentenced 2014
Holland, already serving life without parole for a 1991 Union County capital murder, strangled his cellmate, 22-year-old Matthew Scheile, with a bed sheet at the Cummins Unit in December 2012, about 12 hours after agreeing to accept a cellmate.
Randy W. Gay
Garland County | Sentenced 2015
Gay was convicted in the 2011 shooting of Connie Ann Snow, 49, whose body was left in the Ouachita National Forest. It was his third killing. He had prior second-degree murder convictions for killing his father-in-law in 1978 and his father in 1992.
Zachary D. Holly
Benton County | Sentenced 2015
Holly was convicted in the November 2012 kidnapping, rape and murder of his 6-year-old neighbor, Jersey Bridgeman, in Bentonville.
Eric A. Reid
Garland County | Sentenced 2018
Reid was convicted in the October 2015 shooting deaths of his wife, Laura Reid, 57, and his daughter, Mary Ann Reid, 32, at their home near Hot Springs.
Scotty R. Gardner
Faulkner County | Sentenced 2018
Gardner was convicted in the 2016 strangulation of his girlfriend, Susan Heather Stubbs, at a Conway motel. He is now asking a judge to dismiss his final state appeal without a hearing.
No one has been added to Arkansas death row since Gardner in August 2018. The state’s last execution was in April 2017. Bruce Ward, previously the longest-serving inmate on the row, died of natural causes in March 2026.
