Legal counsel representing a Mississippi man sitting on death row for nearly 50 years and the state’s attorney general are sparring over what should happen next with the inmate.
The Mississippi Supreme Court on Tuesday unanimously rejected the most recent attempt at post-conviction relief by 78-year-old Richard Gerald Jordan. Jordan was given the death penalty back in 1976 after being found guilty of kidnapping and killing Edwina Marter, the wife of a bank executive, on the Mississippi Gulf Coast.
Nonetheless, the defendant wants a rehearing, but his legal counsel needs additional time to file for one. Jordan’s attorney, Krissy C. Nobile, has asked the state’s high court to grant an additional 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 move the deadline to November 14.
“Counsel [does] not request this extension for purposes of delay but because of competing work and personal obligations,” a portion of Nobile’s motion for extension reads.
Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch’s office, on the other hand, is ready for the state to set an execution date for the inmate and believes an extension to file a rehearing is unnecessary. Jordan is Mississippi’s longest pending death penalty case.
Allison Kay Hartman, special assistant to the attorney general, argued that the state supreme court had already denied all of Jordan’s attempts at appealing his death sentence, which has been consistently delivered four times after a series of challenges and federal rulings.
“Jordan should be required to file a motion for rehearing within fourteen days as required by Mississippi Rule of Appellate Procedure 40. This Court should not allow Jordan to continue to delay,” Hartman wrote in response to the request for a filing extension.
Jordan, who was unemployed and strapped for cash, orchestrated a plan to break into a wealthy person’s home back in 1976. The now-inmate called Gulf National Bank and asked to speak with someone in charge of divvying out personal loans. Once informed that Chuck Marter was over commercial loans, Jordan used a telephone directory to find the banker’s home address.
He later showed up at the Marter residence posing as an electric company worker needing to check on the circuit breakers in the home.
That’s when Jordan is reported to have kidnapped Edwina Marter and taken her to the DeSoto National Forest in Harrison County where he fatally shot her. Following the gunfire, the death row inmate called Marter’s husband and told him his wife was alive, seeking $50,000 in ransom before settling on $25,000 as a sufficient figure.
The husband ultimately left the funds at a location off Interstate 10 and Canal Road in Gulfport. Federal agents and local police waited near where the cash had been dropped off. Officers made a move on Jordan when he attempted to retrieve the money. The subject led law enforcement on a chase and successfully evaded police, later ditching his vehicle.
Hours after the chase, a Gulfport police officer spotted Jordan in a taxi cab and took him into custody. Jordan fessed up to killing the victim and pointed officers to the body and murder weapon. He later claimed to a psychiatrist that a bystander had killed Edwina Marter, but that was neither deemed credible nor used by the defense in court.
Jordan is one of the death row inmates who has challenged the state of Mississippi’s plan to use midazolam, among two other drugs, to execute inmates sentenced to death.
U.S. District Judge Henry Wingate has not made an ultimate decision on the usage of the drugs in executions. However, he did not prevent the state from taking Thomas Loden’s life back in 2022 — the most recent execution of a death row inmate in Mississippi.
