Mississippi's attorney general wants to set an execution date for a death row inmate

The lawyer for a Mississippi man who has been on death row for nearly 50 years and the attorney general are arguing over what should happen next to the inmate.

The Mississippi Supreme Court on Tuesday unanimously rejected 78-year-old Richard Gerald Jordan's latest attempt to seek restitution following his conviction. Jordan was sentenced to death in 1976 after being found guilty of kidnapping and killing Edwina Marter, the wife of a bank manager, on the Mississippi Gulf Coast.

However, the defendant wants a rehearing, but his lawyer needs additional time to file for one. Jordan's attorney, Krissy C. Nobile, has asked the state Supreme Court to allow another month to file for a rehearing. As things stand, she has until October 15 to request a reevaluation of Jordan's case. An extension would push the deadline to November 14th.

“Advice [does] I am requesting this extension not because of delay, but because of competing professional and personal commitments,” reads part of Nobile’s request for the extension.

Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch's office, however, is willing to allow the state to set an execution date for the inmate and believes an extension of the deadline to file for a rehearing is unnecessary. Jordan is the longest pending death in Mississippi.

Allison Kay Hartman, special assistant to the attorney general, argued that the state Supreme Court had already rejected all of Jordan's attempts to appeal his death sentence, which was imposed four times after a series of legal challenges and federal rulings.

“Jordan should be required to file a motion for rehearing within fourteen days as required by Mississippi Appellate Rule 40. This court should not allow Jordan to delay any further,” Hartman wrote in response to the request for an extension.

In 1976, Jordan, who was unemployed and short of money, hatched a plan to break into a wealthy person's house. The current inmate called Gulf National Bank and asked to speak to someone in charge of personal loan distribution. When Jordan learned that Chuck Marter was out of commercial loans, he used a phone book to find the banker's home address.

He later showed up at the Marter residence posing as an electric company worker who needed to check the circuit breakers in the house.

That's when Jordan allegedly kidnapped Edwina Marter and took her to the DeSoto National Forest in Harrison County, where he fatally shot her. After the shooting, the death row inmate called Marter's husband and told him his wife was still alive. He demanded a ransom of $50,000 before settling on $25,000 as a sufficient amount.

The husband eventually left the money at a location at Interstate 10 and Canal Road in Gulfport. Federal agents and local police were waiting near where the money had been dropped off. The officers attacked Jordan as he tried to retrieve the money. The perpetrator led law enforcement on a chase, successfully evaded police and later abandoned his vehicle.

Hours after the chase, a Gulfport police officer spotted Jordan in a taxi and took him into custody. Jordan admitted to killing the victim and pointed out the body and murder weapon to officers. He later claimed to a psychiatrist that a bystander had killed Edwina Marter, but this was neither considered credible nor used by the defense in court.

Jordan is one of the death row inmates who have challenged the state of Mississippi's plan to use midazolam, along with two other drugs, to execute death row inmates.

U.S. District Judge Henry Wingate has not yet made a final decision on the use of the drugs in executions. However, it did not stop the state from taking Thomas Loden's life in 2022 – the latest execution of a death row inmate in Mississippi.