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Mississippi is preparing to execute 79-year-old Richard Gerald Jordan, the state’s longest-serving death row inmate, nearly five decades after he was sentenced for a brutal kidnapping and murder carried out in a ransom plot.
Jordan, a Vietnam War veteran diagnosed with PTSD, is scheduled to receive a lethal injection Wednesday at the Mississippi State Penitentiary in Parchman. He is one of several inmates suing the state over its three-drug execution protocol, which they argue is inhumane. Several of Jordan’s final appeals remain pending before the U.S. Supreme Court.
If carried out, this will mark Mississippi’s third execution in the last decade. The most recent occurred in December 2022. Jordan’s execution follows another that took place in Florida just a day earlier, contributing to what could be the highest number of executions in a year since 2015.
Jordan was convicted in 1976 for the murder of Edwina Marter, a mother of two, whom he kidnapped after identifying her husband, Charles Marter, as a bank loan officer. He found the Marters’ address through a phone book, abducted Edwina, and fatally shot her in a forest before demanding a $25,000 ransom. Despite claiming she was safe, she had already been killed by the time he made the call.
“He needs to be punished,” said Eric Marter, who was 11 years old when his mother was killed. He, his brother, and their father do not plan to attend the execution, though other family members are expected to be present.
“It should have happened a long time ago,” he added. “I’m not really interested in giving him the benefit of the doubt.”
Jordan’s case has been through four trials and numerous appeals over the years. On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court denied a petition arguing Jordan had been denied due process by not having access to an independent mental health expert during his defense.
“He was never given what, for a long time, the law has entitled him to,” said Krissy Nobile, Jordan’s attorney and director of Mississippi’s Office of Capital Post-Conviction Counsel. “Because of that, his jury never got to hear about his Vietnam experiences.”
A clemency petition sent to Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves highlighted Jordan’s three consecutive combat tours in Vietnam and the trauma he endured. It argued that his PTSD may have played a significant role in the crime. Reeves denied the request.
“His war service, his war trauma, was considered not relevant in his murder trial,” said Franklin Rosenblatt, president of the National Institute of Military Justice, who supported Jordan’s clemency petition. “We just know so much more now about the long-term impact of war trauma.”
Eric Marter, however, rejects that defense:
“I know what he did. He wanted money, and he couldn’t take her with him. So he did what he did.”
