Mississippi justices reject latest appeal from man on death row since 1976

JACKSON, Miss. — The Mississippi Supreme Court on Tuesday unanimously denied the latest appeal from a man who has been on the state's death row longer than any other inmate.

Richard Gerald Jordan, now 78, was sentenced to death in 1976 for the kidnapping and killing of Edwina Marter earlier that year in Harrison County.

The Associated Press sent an email to the Mississippi Attorney General's Office on Tuesday asking if the the new ruling could allow the state to set an execution date.

Krissy Nobile, Jordan's attorney and director of the Mississippi Office of Capital Post-Conviction Counsel, said she thinks state justices erred in not applying a 2017 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that dealt with independent mental health experts in death penalty cases.

''We are exploring all federal and state options for Mr. Jordan and will be moving for rehearing in the Mississippi Supreme Court,'' Nobile said.

Mississippi Supreme Court records show that in January 1976, Jordan traveled from Louisiana to Gulfport, Mississippi, where he called Gulf National Bank and asked to speak to a loan officer. After he was told Charles Marter could speak with him, Jordan ended the call, looked up Marter's home address in a telephone book, went to the house and got in by pretending to work for the electric company.

Records show Jordan kidnapped Edwina Marter, took her to a forest and shot her to death, then later called her husband, falsely said she was safe and demanded $25,000.

Jordan has filed multiple appeals of his death sentence. The one denied Tuesday was filed in December 2022. It argued Jordan was denied due process because he should have had a psychiatric examiner appointed solely for his defense rather than a court-appointed psychiatric examiner who provided findings to both the prosecution and his defense.

Mississippi justices said Jordan's attorneys had raised the issue in his previous appeals, and that a federal judge ruled having one court-appointed expert did not violate Jordan's constitutional rights.

Jordan is one of the death row inmates who challenged the state's plan to use a sedative called midazolam as one of the three drugs to carry out executions. The other drugs were vecuronium bromide, which paralyzes muscles, and potassium chloride, which stops the heart.

U.S. District Judge Henry Wingate has not issued a final decision in the execution drugs case, according to court records. But Wingate ruled in December 2022 that he would not block the state from executing Thomas Edwin Loden, one of the inmates who was suing the state over the drugs. Loden was put to death a week later, and that was the most recent execution in Mississippi.