Mississippi sets an execution date for a man who’s been on death row since 1976

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — Mississippi’s longest-serving death row inmate is set to be executed on June 25, the state Supreme Court ruled Thursday.

Richard Gerald Jordan, 78, who was sentenced to death in 1976 for kidnapping and killing a woman, has filed multiple death sentence appeals, the most recent of which was denied in October.

The Mississippi ruling comes on the same day Army Combat veteran Jeffrey Hutchinson was scheduled to be executed in Florida. Before Thursday, 14 people had been executed in the U.S., including three in Florida.

The order did not specify the manner in which Jordan will be executed. Mississippi law allows death sentences to be carried out using lethal injection, nitrogen gas, electrocution or firing squad.

According to Mississippi Supreme Court records, Jordan kidnapped Edwina Marter in January 1976 and shot her to death in a forest in Harrison County. He then called her husband, Charles Marter, falsely claimed she was safe and asked for $25,000.

Records show that before the killing Jordan had traveled from Louisiana to Gulfport, Mississippi and called the Gulf National Bank, where Charles Marter worked as a loan officer. After he was told Marter could speak with him, he hung up, looked up the Marters’ home address and went to the house posing as an electric company employee.

“After due consideration, the Court finds Jordan has exhausted all state and federal remedies for purposes of setting an execution,” the ruling read.

Mississippi’s last execution was in December 2022.