Mississippi asks court to set execution for man on death row since 1976

Associated Press

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — The Mississippi attorney general  requesting an execution date for the state’s longest-serving death row inmate. Richard Gerald Jordan is 78. He was sentenced to death in 1976 for the kidnapping and killing of Edwina Marter that year in Harrison County. The Mississippi Supreme Court rejected his latest appeal Tuesday. Hours later, Attorney General Lynn Fitch filed papers asking the court to set a date for the lethal injection. Jordan’s attorney, Krissy Nobile, says justices ignored a 2017 U.S. Supreme Court ruling on experts in death penalty cases. Jordan shot Marter in a forest, then contacted her husband, said she was safe and demanded $25,000.