26 June 2025 :
June 25, 2025 - Mississippi. Richard Jordan, 79, White, was executed on June 25
By lethal injection at the Mississippi State Penitentiary in Parchman
Richard Jordan, the state's oldest death row inmate at 79, was executed by lethal injection on June 25, and pronounced dead at 6:16 p.m. local time. He became the 25th inmate executed in the United States this year, matching the number of executions during all of 2024.
Jordan's execution came nearly five decades after he kidnapped and killed Edwina Marter, 35, who was shot in the back of the head many hours before her banker husband − believing she was still alive − paid a $25,000 ransom for her return on Jan. 12, 1976.
"I would like to thank everyone here for a humane way of doing this," Jordan said in the death chamber as he looked at the ceiling. "I wish to apologize to the family. I ask that you forgive me for what I did. Not forget, but forgive." As part of his last words, he thanked his wife, Marsha, who sobbing in the front row of the execution viewing area.
Jordan had been challenging the drugs used in lethal-injection executions and arguing that "Vietnam forever changed" him and left him a "traumatized man," according to his petition for clemency filed on June 16. The petition stated that Jordan served three combat tours totaling 33 months, often in perilous positions as a helicopter gunner, earning him various medals and an honorable discharge.
Jurors at Jordan's 1976 trial never heard about his war service and subsequent post-traumatic stress disorder, information that could very well have spared him from the death penalty, the petition argued.
On Jan. 12, 1976, Edwina Marter was at home in Mississippi City with one of her two sons, 3-year-old Kevin, while her 10-year-old son Eric was in school, according to court records.
Richard Jordan showed up and kidnapped Marter as Kevin slept. Jordan had found out that her husband, Charles Marter, was an executive at Gulf National Bank and decided to target the couple for ransom money, court records said.
Jordan took Edwina Marter about 35 miles away to a deserted area of the DeSoto National Forest, where prosecutors said he executed her by shooting a bullet into the back of her head as she knelt. Jordan maintained that the fatal bullet was supposed to be a warning shot when she ran away.
After killing Edwina, Jordan called Charles Marter, told him that his wife was alive and well, and that it would cost him $25,000 to get her back, court records said.
A half dozen law enforcement agencies, including the FBI, deployed when Marter immediately reported the kidnapping, and area journalists made a rare agreement for nearly 24 hours of news silence to allow the frantic husband to make a money drop, according to reporting in the Daily Herald.
After Jordan bailed on several money drops because he spotted law enforcement monitoring nearby, Marter eventually left the cash under a jacket by the side of a road. Jordan retrieved it as authorities watched, this time undetected. Jordan escaped after a high-speed chase but was later arrested when he was spotted in the back of a taxi at a police roadblock.
Richard Jordan had been sentenced to death 4 times
Jordan was sentenced to death in 1976, but that was later vacated over a change in the death penalty law. He was again tried, convicted, and sentenced to death in 1977, but an appeals court later vacated that sentence over unconstitutional penalty-phase instructions.
He again got the death penalty at a 1983 resentencing, but that, too, was later vacated by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Jordan then reached an agreement with prosecutors for a life sentence. But in 1994, the Supreme Court of Mississippi invalidated the agreement, saying it shouldn't have been an option.
Jordan was sentenced to death for the fourth time in 1998.
It's not uncommon for veterans to be executed
In 2015, the Death Penalty Information Center identified 300 veterans who had been sentenced to death, or about 10% of death row. Many more had already been executed.
Jordan becomes the 1st person executed in Mississippi this year, the 24th since the state restarted executions in 1983, 25th inmate executed in the United States this year, and the 1,631st overall since the nation resumed executions in 1977.
https://www.aol.com/vietnam-veteran-executed-mississippi-nearly-225824820.html
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/richard-gerald-jordans-final-words-before-mississippi-execution/ar-AA1HrJ2c?ocid=BingNewsSerp
