Richard Jordan was convicted in 1976 for the murder of Edwina Marter, the wife of a Gulfport banking executive in a botched ransom scheme. Over the decades, he has been sentenced to death four separate times through multiple retrials, appeals, and a plea deal in 1991 that was later invalidated because Mississippi law didn’t allow life without parole at the time.
Krissy Nobile, Director of the Mississippi Office of Capital Post-Conviction Counsel, has been working on Jordan's case since 2021 and says she thinks the state violated the 79-year-old’s constitutional rights in the fourth trial.
“His jury never got to hear about his combat experiences in Vietnam, his service to his country or how his mind for a while was broken by war and had PTSD,” Nobile said. “So the jury was forced to make a decision for life or death based on a very, very incomplete story of who Richard Jordan is.”
Jordan's attorneys have challenged Mississippi’s three-drug lethal injection protocol, arguing a sedative used first creates substantial risk a prisoner will remain sensitive to the excruciating pain caused by the other drugs.
On June 20, U.S. District Court Judge Henry Wingate ruled the state's protocol does not present an “objectively intolerable risk of harm.” Jordan has since appealed Wingate’s ruling to the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals.
Today, the U.S. Supreme Court denied a petition Jordan’s attorneys filed in March asking the high court to review Jordan’s case, but another petition is still pending.
Beyond intervention by an appellate court, Jordan’s only other avenue for avoiding execution is Gov. Tate Reeves using his clemency powers to change Jordan's sentence to life imprisonment. Reeves has never granted a clemency request.
Franklin Rosenblatt, an associate professor of law at Mississippi College School of Law and former military prosecutor, submitted a clemency petition to Reeves’ office for Jordan. Rosenblatt says Jordan's 33 months of combat service and subsequent post-traumatic stress disorder would be considered by a court in sentencing today in a way that wasn't possible in 1976.
“It's not an impunity mechanism, it's not a get out of jail free card, but you do need to take into account what the veteran has been through when they are charged with regular crimes, especially those that are likely to be connected to their wartime service,” Rosenblatt said.
If Jordan’s sentence is carried out as scheduled, he will be executed at the Mississippi State Penitentiary in Parchman on Wednesday at 6 p.m.
Editor's note: The audio story embedded at the top of this post was recorded before the U.S. Supreme Court denied one of the requests filed for Jordan. The text story has been updated to reflect this development.
