The man who has sat on death row longer than any other Mississippi inmate convicted of capital murder is challenging his sentence once again.
On Wednesday, attorneys representing Richard Gerald Jordan requested post-conviction relief for the inmate or to have his death sentence vacated outright. Jordan has been tried multiple times for murdering a Mississippi Gulf Coast banker’s wife back in 1976. Each trial has consistently resulted in the inmate being convicted and ordered to be executed by the state.
However, Jordan’s attorneys now argue that the death penalty is an inappropriate sentence given the maximum penalty for the crimes he committed was life in prison at the time of the killing.
Officials will weigh the merit of the latest argument espoused by Jordan’s legal counsel. For now, the inmate remains housed at the Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman.
Backstory
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.
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