Joel Drain: Death Penalty for Murdering a Fellow Inmate

Joel Drain, who legally changed her name to Victoria Michelle Drain during her appeal, is on Ohio’s death row for the April 2019 murder of Christopher M. Richardson, a fellow inmate at Warren Correctional Institution. A three-judge panel in Warren County imposed the death penalty on May 18, 2020, after Drain entered a no-contest plea against her attorneys’ advice. She was already serving 38 years to life for a 2016 murder when she killed Richardson. The Ohio Supreme Court unanimously affirmed the conviction and sentence in October 2022, and no execution date has been set.¹

The Killing of Christopher Richardson

Christopher M. Richardson was 29 years old and serving a four-year sentence for aggravated arson out of Delaware County.² He and Drain were both housed in the Residential Treatment Unit at Warren Correctional, a wing that provides psychiatric services.

In two later confessions, one to State Trooper Nathan Stanfield on the day of the attack and an unsolicited written statement weeks later, Drain described what she did. She had originally prepared to kill a different inmate but turned on Richardson after he refused to help lure that person. Drain considered him “easy to manipulate” and invited him to her cell on April 13, 2019, on the pretense of sharing K-2, a synthetic drug. She had arranged items in the cell to keep him from making noise or defending himself.¹

Once Richardson was inside, Drain struck him in the head with a motor she had removed from a large electric fan. When he fell, she kept beating him, drove a pencil into his eye and into his brain, stomped on his throat roughly ten times, and strangled him with a cord and a television antenna cable until he stopped moving. Richardson died two days later, on April 15, 2019. Forensic pathologist Dr. Mary E. Goolsby concluded the cause of death was multiple blunt-force and sharp-force injuries to the head and neck, including a fractured skull and brain trauma.¹ Warren County Prosecutor David Fornshell called the crime scene “a blood bath.”³

In the written confession, Drain also admitted to “several” prior attempts to kill inmates she believed to be child molesters at other prisons.¹

Why Drain Was Already in Prison

In 2016, at age 34, Drain pleaded guilty in Hancock County Common Pleas Court to the aggravated murder of Randy Grose, a 56-year-old man. Drain stabbed Grose in the head and abdomen, though the coroner determined strangulation was the actual cause of death, and stole the victim’s car. An initial plea of not guilty by reason of insanity was withdrawn after Drain was found competent to stand trial. The court imposed a total sentence of 38 years to life, with parole eligibility on the murder charge after 30 years. Drain also pleaded guilty to grand theft auto and felonious assault stemming from the same incident.⁴

That prior conviction did more than provide background. When a Warren County grand jury indicted Drain in August 2019, it charged two counts of aggravated murder, each with death-penalty specifications: one for committing murder while incarcerated, another based on the prior conviction for purposeful killing. A repeat-violent-offender specification and a count for possessing a deadly weapon under detention were also attached.¹

The No-Contest Plea and Death Sentence

Drain told the court she wanted to plead no contest as early as January 2, 2020, and reaffirmed that at a February 19 hearing. Her defense attorneys opposed the plea and questioned her competency, pointing to a history of suicide attempts, including an incident in which she cut her wrists. Court-appointed psychologist Dr. Jennifer O’Donnell, who had also been retained by the defense, found her competent. Drain herself pushed back in open court: “By no means am I incompetent to make this decision and Dr. Jenny O’Donnell will say the same thing.”¹

Judge Donald Oda II initially declined to accept the plea in February 2020 but later agreed to proceed. On May 18, 2020, a three-judge panel held the evidentiary hearing, accepted the plea, and moved directly to sentencing in a single day lasting about five and a half hours.³ The defense had stipulated to the admissibility of all prosecution evidence, so the state’s case came in largely through Trooper Stanfield’s testimony, Drain’s two confessions, and the autopsy report. The panel found her guilty on all counts and specifications.

In the penalty phase, Drain allowed only limited mitigation. Her cousin Miranda Shoemaker and family friend Andrea Stanfield testified, and Drain gave an unsworn statement. She instructed her attorneys not to present testimony from her 14-year-old daughter and refused to let them introduce a compilation of roughly 1,900 pages of prison files, court records tied to gender-affirming treatment, interviews, and reports from Dr. O’Donnell and a mitigation specialist. That material, labeled Defendant’s Exhibit A, was admitted under seal for appellate review only; the sentencing panel did not consider it.⁵

Drain told the panel she wanted no “medical mental health excuses” presented on her behalf and remarked, “My death sentence was handed down long ago.”⁶ The panel sentenced her to death on the aggravated murder conviction, 11 years on the weapon-possession count to run concurrently, and 10 years on the repeat-violent-offender specification to run consecutively to all other sentences.¹

Ohio Supreme Court Affirmance

Ohio law requires an automatic appeal to the state supreme court in every death-penalty case. On October 19, 2022, in a unanimous opinion by Justice Sharon L. Kennedy, the court affirmed Drain’s conviction and sentence in State v. Drain, 170 Ohio St.3d 107. Drain raised 16 propositions of law, and the court rejected each of them.⁷

The core dispute was mitigation. Drain argued her attorneys should have presented the sealed Exhibit A over her objections and that their overall investigation was so deficient that prejudice should be presumed. The court held that counsel had conducted a “thorough investigation,” acted properly by following their client’s explicit instructions, and that even had the sealed material been considered, the “extraordinarily brutal” nature of the murder would have outweighed it. The court’s independent sentence review weighed Drain’s documented childhood trauma and mental health diagnoses, including gender dysphoria, post-traumatic stress disorder, borderline personality disorder, and antisocial personality disorder, and concluded the death penalty was proportionate.¹

Justice Jennifer Brunner dissented alone. She would have sent the case back for a new mitigation hearing, arguing that defense counsel’s investigation fell below professional norms and that even accepting Drain’s restrictions, counsel was not barred from presenting all of the gathered mental health material. Brunner wrote that a “reasonable probability” existed that proper representation would have produced a different sentence.⁷

The Ohio Supreme Court denied reconsideration in December 2022.

Federal Petition and Name Change

In March 2023, Drain petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court for a writ of certiorari, raising two questions: whether the presentation of mitigating evidence is a strategic decision belonging to counsel when the defendant has not completely waived mitigation, and whether the Ohio Supreme Court’s refusal to consider the sealed Exhibit A during independent sentence review violated the Eighth Amendment under Eddings v. Oklahoma. The petition described Drain as a “transwoman” whose gender identity was “well documented at the time of the offense but was never acknowledged during her capital trial.”⁵

Drain legally changed her name from Joel M. Drain to Victoria Michelle Drain during the pendency of the appeal.⁷ A March 2021 filing by her attorneys stated she had been placed in the Residential Treatment Unit at Warren Correctional “due to her attempt to self-castrate because she is transgender.”⁸

Where the Case Stands

Drain is incarcerated at the Ohio State Penitentiary in Youngstown, where the state houses its death row inmates. The Death Penalty Information Center lists her among the women on death row in the United States.⁹

No execution date has been set. Ohio has not carried out an execution since July 2018, and Governor Mike DeWine has delayed every scheduled execution during his tenure, citing an inability to obtain lethal-injection drugs. In June 2026, DeWine formally asked the Ohio legislature to abolish the death penalty, saying, “The moral justification I had… no longer exists.” House Speaker Matt Huffman has said abolition does not yet have majority support in the Republican caucus. More than 100 men and one woman were on Ohio’s death row as of mid-2026.¹⁰ Drain’s sentence was the last death sentence imposed in Ohio until Gurpreet Singh was sentenced in 2024.¹¹

1
Supreme Court of Ohio. State v. Drain, 2022-Ohio-3697
2
Columbus Dispatch. Delaware County Inmate Dies of Injuries
3
WCPO. Warren County Inmate Gets Death Penalty for Murder
4
Hometown Stations. Findlay Man Sentenced to 38 Years to Life in Strangulation Murder
5
U.S. Supreme Court. Drain v. Ohio, Petition for Writ of Certiorari
6
Death Penalty Information Center. First Execution, New Death Sentence During Coronavirus Pandemic Highlight Grave Flaws in U.S. Capital Punishment System
7
Court News Ohio. State v. Drain, Case No. 2020-0652
8
Spectrum News 1. Death Sentence Upheld for Killer With Gender Dysphoria Claim
9
Death Penalty Information Center. Women on Death Row
10
StateNews.org. Gov. DeWine Plans to Make Announcement on Death Penalty in Ohio
11
Justia. Whether or Not Ohio Ever Carries Out Another Execution Will Help Shape the Death Penalty’s Fate Across the Nation