Mississippi Executes Longest-Serving Death Row Inmate, Vietnam Vet Richard Jordan, After Nearly 50 Years

Richard Gerald Jordan, the longest-serving inmate on Mississippi’s death row, was executed Wednesday evening—nearly five decades after he kidnapped and murdered a bank loan officer’s wife in a failed ransom plot.

Jordan, 79, a Vietnam War veteran who had been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), was put to death by lethal injection at the Mississippi State Penitentiary in Parchman. He was pronounced dead at 6:16 p.m.

His execution came just one day after another man was put to death in Florida, marking what is shaping up to be the highest number of U.S. executions in a single year since 2015. Jordan’s case was the third execution carried out in Mississippi over the past decade—the last one taking place in December 2022.

Jordan was sentenced to death in 1976 for the kidnapping and murder of Edwina Marter, wife of Gulf National Bank loan officer Charles Marter. According to court documents, Jordan had called the bank asking to speak to a loan officer and then used a telephone directory to find the Marters’ home. He abducted Edwina, drove her to a wooded area, shot her dead, and then called her husband, falsely claiming she was alive while demanding a $25,000 ransom.

His death ends a legal saga spanning four trials, numerous appeals, and multiple legal challenges, including a lawsuit over Mississippi’s three-drug execution method, which Jordan and others claimed was inhumane.

On Wednesday afternoon, the U.S. Supreme Court denied Jordan’s final appeals without comment. A petition for clemency submitted to Governor Tate Reeves argued that Jordan’s severe PTSD and combat trauma from serving three consecutive tours in Vietnam were never fully presented during his trial. Advocates said this omission denied him a fair chance at mercy.

“He was never given what the law long required: access to an independent mental health expert for his defense,” said Krissy Nobile, director of Mississippi’s Office of Capital Post-Conviction Counsel.

Franklin Rosenblatt, president of the National Institute of Military Justice, added, “His war service and trauma were dismissed as irrelevant during his trial. We now know much more about how war impacts the brain and behavior.”

But Edwina Marter’s family has long rejected that argument. Eric Marter, who was 11 when his mother was murdered, said the family had waited far too long for justice.

“It should have happened a long time ago,” he told the Associated Press. “He needs to be punished. I know what he did. He wanted money, and he couldn’t take her with him. So he did what he did.”

As of early 2024, Jordan was one of just 22 people nationwide still on death row for crimes committed in the 1970s, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.