Bio

Benny Lee Hodge was born on August 9, 1951. Court records developed during his later appeals describe a childhood marked by extreme and sustained abuse. His mother was married to six different men over the course of his childhood, several of whom were substance abusers, and some of whom were physically abusive toward her. When Hodge was eight, his mother married a man referred to in court records as "Billy Joe," whom multiple witnesses, including Hodge's sisters,  described as inflicting severe physical and psychological abuse on Hodge, including forcing him to watch the killing of his own dog. 

Courts later found that this abuse began even before Hodge's birth, with his father physically battering his mother while she was pregnant with him. Despite this background, school records indicated Hodge was of average intelligence and received average grades through elementary school.

Murder Story

On June 16, 1985, Edwin and Bessie Morris were murdered in their home in Gray Hawk, Jackson County, Kentucky. Their bodies were found bound — Edwin gagged with his hands tied behind his back, Bessie with her hands tied behind her back and her feet tied together. Edwin Morris had been shot twice in the head, either wound being independently fatal; he also suffered blunt-force head injuries and asphyxiation caused by a ligature gag. Bessie Morris had been shot twice in the back.

On the night of August 8, 1985, Hodge and his accomplices Roger Dale Epperson and Donald Terry Bartley entered the Fleming-Neon, Kentucky home of Dr. Roscoe J. Acker, a physician, with at least two of the men posing as federal agents to gain entry. Once inside, they choked Dr. Acker into unconsciousness and forced him to open a safe, from which they stole cash reported at roughly $1.9–2 million, along with jewelry and firearms. During the robbery, they stabbed Dr. Acker's 23-year-old daughter, Tammy Dee Acker, at least ten times with a butcher knife as she lay on the floor; the knife was left protruding from her back, with the blade driven through her body and into the floor beneath her. Dr. Acker survived the strangulation and later testified at trial that upon regaining consciousness, he found his daughter's body bound and gagged near her bed.

Hodge, Epperson, and Bartley were tracked to a condominium in Ormond Beach, Florida, and arrested on August 15, 1985. Epperson was found several miles away driving a Corvette he had purchased with $25,000 in cash shortly beforehand. All three were extradited to Kentucky to face charges.

Bartley cooperated with prosecutors, testifying that Hodge was the one who used the knife on Tammy Acker; he was convicted and received a life sentence rather than death. Hodge and Epperson were tried together in Letcher Circuit Court, and on June 20, 1986, both were convicted and sentenced to death for the murder of Tammy Acker.

Hodge and Epperson were also charged in the Morris murders. They were originally convicted and sentenced to death for those killings on November 7, 1987, but this conviction was later vacated on appeal and the case was remanded for a new trial. Following a change of venue, Hodge was retried by a jury in Laurel Circuit Court in October 1996; he was again convicted of both murders, along with robbery and burglary, and was sentenced to death on both murder counts (with 20-year terms on the other counts) in approximately late November 1996.

Hodge has pursued extensive post-conviction litigation over several decades, principally arguing that his trial counsel provided constitutionally ineffective assistance by failing to present available mitigating evidence — particularly regarding his abusive childhood — at the sentencing phase of his original 1986 trial for the Acker murder. In 2012, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear his case, though Justice Sotomayor dissented from that denial, expressing concern that the Kentucky Supreme Court had applied an improper legal standard in rejecting his ineffective-assistance claim.

Hodge continued to pursue federal habeas corpus relief. In 2024, a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit reversed itself on rehearing and granted Hodge habeas relief on his ineffective-assistance claim, overturning his death sentence for the Acker murder. Kentucky's Attorney General sought review by the full court, and in a rare en banc rehearing involving all eighteen judges of the Sixth Circuit, the court voted 14–4 in May 2025 to reverse course again, upholding Hodge's death sentence. Hodge subsequently filed a petition for a writ of certiorari with the U.S. Supreme Court; as of the most recent available records, that petition had been distributed for the Court's consideration, with a decision expected to close out this stage of his federal appeals.

Both Hodge and Epperson remain sentenced to death for the Morris murders as of the most recent available reporting.