JACKSON, Miss. (WJTV) – The Mississippi Supreme Court denied a motion for rehearing for the man who has been on the state’s death row longer than any other inmate.
In May 2025, the Mississippi Supreme Court set an execution date for Richard Gerald Jordan. The execution date was set for June 25, 2025. In October 2024, the Mississippi Supreme Court unanimously denied his appeal.
Jordan’s attorney sent a letter to the Mississippi Supreme Court on June 3 that requested the rehearing. She said the U.S. Supreme Court distributed Jordan’s Petition for Writ of Certiorari for conference, and the conference date for the petition was set for June 18, 2025.
That the Supreme Court has set a conference date so close to the current execution date shows
why state statute instructs that an execution date not be set until “all state and federal remedies
have been exhausted.” Miss. Code Ann. § 99-19-106 (emphasis added).Here, the State’s motion did not—because it could not—declare that Jordan’s federal and
state remedies have been exhausted. Rehearing as to the setting of an execution date should be
granted. The Court should hold the State’s motion to set an execution date in abeyance until all
remedies are exhausted.Krissy C. Nobile, Counsel for Richard Gerald Jordan
The Mississippi Supreme Court denied the motion for the rehearing on June 12.
Jordan was sentenced to death in 1976 for the kidnapping and killing of Edwina Marter earlier that year in Harrison County.
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 in October 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.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.