State’s longest serving death row prisoner files new challenge to sentence

Mississippi’s oldest and longest serving death row prisoner, Richard Jordan, is trying again to challenge his sentence, this time arguing that it is invalid because the death penalty was not constitutional at the time of the murder. 

“All in all, the fact remains that the only constitutional sentence for any classification of ‘murder’ at the time of Jordan’s offense was imprisonment for life in the state penitentiary,” his attorneys wrote in a Nov. 14 petition for post-conviction relief.

“Jordan’s death sentence should thus be vacated.”

His post-conviction petition is the fifth in the past two decades, which have each raised issues during his multiple trials and sentencing and the state’s lethal injection protocol for executions.

The Mississippi Supreme Court will decide whether to grant the relief or deny the relief like it has in other post-conviction appeals. 

Meanwhile, the Attorney General’s Office has argued that Jordan is out of legal options and the time has come to set an execution date. Recent calls came in October when the court denied Jordan’s previous petition, and in November when it filed a motion to dismiss the current one.

Regardless, Jordan’s attorneys argue he has not exhausted his federal and state options. The state previously asked for Jordan’s execution date to be set in 2015, but the Supreme Court did not act. 

Born in Hattiesburg, Jordan was adopted and grew up with siblings in nearby Petal. 

He served in the Army after graduating from high school and was deployed to Vietnam, volunteering to be a door gunner who shot at people from the sky and maintained helicopter maintenance. 

Court records document combat experiences that continue to haunt him and how, after the war, Jordan was a changed man who showed signs of hypervigilance, emotional numbness and suspicion of strangers – signs of post-traumatic stress disorder. 

Despite that, his attorneys argue Jordan was dedicated to his country and his family, which was seen when Jordan volunteered to stay in Vietnam in the military so his younger brother could return home. 

After Vietnam, he married and had three children. Jordan experienced difficulty adjusting to civilian life and felt more comfortable on military bases. This created tension with his wife who wanted to return to Mississippi, according to court records. 

In 1976, Jordan did not have a job. Growing desperate, Jordan made plans to kidnap someone from a wealthy family and demand a ransom. Jordan called Gulf National Bank in Gulfport and found out the name of its commercial loan officer, Chuck Marter. 

He went to the telephone directory to get Marter’s address. Jordan showed up at the Marter home posing as an electric company worker and kidnapped Chuck’s wife, Edwina. 

The couple’s sleeping 3-year-old child was left behind. Chuck was at work, and the Marter’s other 9-year-old child was at a class. 

Jordan took Edwina to the DeSoto National Forest – over 500,000 acres of pine forest located between Gulfport and Hattiesburg. Then he called the victim’s husband to try and collect $50,000 in ransom money. Before getting the money, Jordan shot Edwina once in the head, killing her.

He was first convicted for her murder in 1976 and sentenced to death. 

What followed were three additional trials, each where he was convicted and given a death sentence, only for the conviction to be thrown out due to constitutional issues, including problems with the state’s death penalty sentencing scheme and his ability to present mitigating evidence. 

In 1991, Jordan was offered a plea deal of life in prison, which he accepted to avoid the death penalty. He later learned that sentence was not allowed under the state’s sentencing guidelines at the time, so Jordan challenged it hoping it would be changed to life with the possibility of parole. 

The Mississippi Supreme Court ordered a new sentencing hearing, and instead of making another plea offer, the district attorney’s office pursued the death penalty, according to court records.

A sentence did not stick until 1998.

For the past 20 years, Jordan has had a direct appeal, a federal habeas case and has pursued post-conviction relief through the state courts. 

In post-conviction petitions, his attorneys have raised issues including his access to an independent expert to assist with his defense and testify about his PTSD and ineffective counsel. 

Jordan’s appeals have also been tied to legal challenges of the state’s lethal injection protocol. 

He and Ricky Chase, who has been on death row since 1990 for kidnapping and murder in Copiah County, are lead plaintiffs in an ongoing federal lawsuit challenging the state’s use of three drugs for executions. 

Mississippi and other states have faced challenges in obtaining pentobarbital, which is often used as a sedative and is the first in the three-drug cocktail for lethal injections, because manufacturers stopped selling them. 

In response, the state obtained and planned to use alternative drugs to carry out executions, but the death row inmates represented by the MacArthur Justice Center in New Orleans convinced a judge in 2015 to order an injunction. 

In the middle of the lawsuit, the Mississippi Department of Corrections changed its lethal injection protocol to include midazolam, which it contended was another type of anesthetic, and the state asked for Jordan’s execution date, according to court records. 

That injunction was appealed, challenging the federal court’s jurisdiction to order the state agency to follow state law. The U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals agreed and vacated the injunction. 

The 5th circuit allowed Jordan to file a claim in a post-conviction petition that midazolam isn’t authorized to be used as the first in the three-drug cocktail. Petitions were filed and later denied. 

Over the years, several other death row inmates have joined the lawsuit, including intervenor Thomas Loden Jr., whose 2023 execution was allowed to proceed despite his involvement in the lawsuit.  
Another intervenor is Robert Simon Jr., who is pursuing post-conviction relief, another person the attorney general’s office argues should have an execution date set.

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

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