Mississippi Executes Longest-Serving Death Row Inmate for 1976 Murder

Richard Gerald Jordan, a 79-year-old Vietnam veteran suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, was executed by lethal injection in Mississippi, nearly 50 years after kidnapping and murdering Edwina Marter in a ransom plot. Jordan's death sentence, initially given in 1976, followed a lengthy legal process involving multiple trials, appeals, and challenges to the state's three-drug execution protocol, all of which were ultimately denied, including clemency from Governor Tate Reeves. Despite his family's divided views—Edwina Marter's son Eric stated the execution should have happened long ago and expressed no sympathy—Jordan's final moments were reportedly calm, and he spent time with family, lawyers, and spiritual advisers before the execution. The execution marks the third in Mississippi in the last decade and coincides with a year seeing a rise in executions nationally. Jordan was one of 22 inmates nationwide sentenced in the 1970s still on death row, underscoring the decades-long delays in capital punishment cases. The case has also raised discussions about the impact of wartime trauma on criminal behavior and the ethics surrounding execution methods.