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Thread: Richard Gerald Jordan - Mississippi Death Row

  1. #11
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    What's taking Scotus so long?

  2. #12
    Moderator Dave from Florida's Avatar
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    SCOTUS asked for the records from the lower courts and have re-listed it 4 times so expect something this coming week unless they hold it over until the next term. I suspect that some of the justices agree with the dissent at the 5th Circuit.
    Last edited by Dave from Florida; 06-07-2015 at 01:35 PM.

  3. #13
    Administrator Moh's Avatar
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    In today's orders, the United States Supreme Court DENIED Jordan's certiorari petition. Justices Sotomayor, Ginsburg and Kagan dissented.

    Jordan may soon get an execution date.

    http://www.supremecourt.gov/orders/c...15zor_4g25.pdf

  4. #14
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    Jordan appeal denied by US Supreme Court

    By JACK ELLIOTT, JR.
    The Associated Press

    JACKSON, Miss. - The U.S. Supreme Court has declined to hear an appeal from a Mississippi death row inmate.

    Court officials announced the decision Monday. The court did not comment on its decision.

    Richard Gerald Jordan’s arguments of prosecutorial vindictiveness and ineffective assistance of counsel had been pending before the nation’s high court since January.

    Jordan was convicted of capital murder committed in the course of kidnapping Edwina Marta in Harrison County in 1976.

    Now 68, Jordan is the oldest inmate on Mississippi’s death row, having won three successful appeals only to be resentenced to death. He’s also the longest serving, having spent 38 years in death row.

    Attorney General Jim Hood is expected to file a motion soon with the Mississippi Supreme Court for an execution date.

    Jordan was convicted of capital murder committed in the course of a kidnapping and was sentenced to death on four separate occasions in the case. Following the first three convictions, Jordan challenged his death sentence successfully, was re-tried, and was again re-sentenced to death.

    Jordan was convicted of kidnapping and killing Edwina Marter in Harrison County on Jan. 13, 1976. He was accused of collecting a $25,000 ransom from Marter’s husband, then taking the woman to a wooded area in north Harrison County and shooting her in the back of the head.

    In 1991, after a third successful challenge to his sentence, Jordan entered into an agreement with the prosecution to serve a sentence of life imprisonment without parole in exchange for not further contesting his sentence.

    Jordan appealed to the Mississippi Supreme Court, saying he had agreed to the sentence but it was invalid under state law.

    The Supreme Court in 1997 agreed, ruling life without parole as a sentencing option did not exist until July 1, 1994. The justices said the only sentences available to Jordan were death or life imprisonment with parole. The justices ordered a new sentencing hearing.

    Thereafter, Jordan sought a life with parole sentence. The prosecutor refused. The prosecutor said that, because Jordan “violated” the first agreement by asking the court to change his earlier sentence, the prosecutor would not again enter into a plea agreement with Jordan for a life sentence. The prosecutor instead successfully sought the death penalty for the fourth time in a 1998 sentencing trial.

    http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/...#ixzz3eYUzR8g4

  5. #15
    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
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    No drug, no death: State's lethal injection protocol stalls execution of South Mississippi murderer

    The execution of Richard Gerald Jordan, Mississippi's longest-serving death row inmate, is being held up over a lawsuit. Jordan filed suit to stop the state from using a lethal cocktail he says is experimental and could cause him great pain before he dies.

    Jordan exhausted all of his appeals before the U.S. Supreme Court at the end of June, paving the way for Attorney General Jim Hood to request an execution date.

    In other such cases from as far back as April 1989, the Attorney General's Office filed for an execution date within a day or two of the exhaustion of an inmate's final appeal.

    Attorney General Jim Hood's office said Jordan's litigation has held up the request to set an execution date because the Mississippi Department of Corrections "can no longer obtain (the anesthetic) pentobarbital and thus will have to obtain another drug in (its) place."

    "That change has not been made as of yet and we have informed the federal court we will not request an execution date prior to that change," Hood's office said.

    Pentobarbital, which is produced in European countries, is not available because those countries do not support lethal injection or the death penalty.

    MDOC did not wish to comment, citing the pending litigation.

    The state adopted the latest lethal-injection protocol in 2011 after manufacturers of the previous execution drug ceased its distribution to prisons in the United States because it did not want them used in executions.

    Jordan's lawsuit, filed by the Solange MacArthur Justice Center in New Orleans, requested an injunction to stop the use of the current execution protocol.

    In the suit, lawyer Jim Craig said Mississippi is one of the last states in the nation to use a compounded form of pentobarbital before injecting a paralytic drug and potassium chloride to execute a condemned person.

    He questioned whether the state could mix a safe and effective form of pentobarbital as an anesthetic.

    Even if it did, Craig said, it could act more slowly than the previous drugs used, resulting in a person remaining conscious and aware he is suffocating when the paralytic drug is administered prior to potassium chloride to stop the heart.

    "… The untried and untested drugs …" the suit says, result in a substantial risk for the condemned to face a "torturous death by live suffocation and cardiac arrest."

    Jordan is suing based on his right to not suffer cruel and unusual punishment.

    Family wants justice

    That means little to the family members of Jordan's victim, Edwina Marter, who have waited more than 38 years for closure.

    "This has been going on for us far too long," said Marter's sister Mary Degruy. "When is this going to happen? Nobody is calling us."

    Edwina Marter was 37 years old when Jordan kidnapped and killed her in Harrison County on Jan. 11, 1976.

    Degruy still visits her sister's grave in New Orleans often, leaving flowers and maintaining its surroundings in her memory.

    Marter and her husband, Charles, had been together for years and had two sons.

    "She was very good-hearted and she loved her kids," Degruy said. "She did charity and they were well known in Mississippi. She would always come and stay with us for a week or two when the kids weren't in school. We did everything together when we could."

    Charles Marter over the years has often spoken out about his wife's killing and the delay in justice, but now in his 70s, he no longer wants to discuss it, his son Eric Marter said.

    Eric Marter said he was 11 years old when his mother was murdered.

    "She was a stay-at-home mom and she took care of us," he said. "She was always there for us. But ours wasn't a normal childhood with a mom and dad because of this."

    As for Jordan, he said, "He should have been executed a long time ago."

    The murder plot

    Jordan killed Edwina Marter execution-style shortly after he arrived in South Mississippi on Jan. 11, 1976, and spotted Gulf National Bank at U.S. 90 and U.S. 49 in Gulfport. He called and asked for the name of the senior commercial loan officer and was told it was Charles Marter, who was also vice president of the bank.

    Jordan went through a Gulfport city directory, which at that time listed occupations, to find Marter's home address.

    Jordan went to the home, posing as an electrical repairman to check the breaker boxes, and Edwina Marter let him in.

    He grabbed her as her 3-year-old son slept in a bedroom and forced her into a car. He drove to De Soto National Forest, where he let her out and killed her.

    After the killing, Jordan called Charles Marter demanding a $25,000 ransom in exchange for his wife's safe return. He told Marter to wrap the ransom up in a brown paper bag and drop it off at a location on U.S. 49. Marter gathered up the money, but also alerted authorities.

    Twice Marter tried to deliver the ransom to Jordan, but Jordan saw law enforcement officers as Marter was making his way to the drop-off point. He left both times. He contacted Marter a third time, telling him to leave the money under a jacket on Interstate 10 near the Canal Road exit.

    Marter left the money, but neither he nor Jordan knew authorities were watching.

    When Jordan picked up the money, authorities chased him, but he eluded them. He drove to a discount pharmacy to buy new clothes, then called a taxi. He was in a taxi when authorities arrested him in a roadblock.

    Jordan confessed to killing Edwina Marter and told authorities where to find her body. Her family said she'd been shot and tied to a tree.

    "He took my sister away and we're still dealing with it," Degruy said. "I think he's been living long enough. It's not fair to us. You know, you don't like people to die, but he deserves it."

    http://www.sunherald.com/2015/07/23/...#storylink=cpy
    An uninformed opponent is a dangerous opponent.

    "Y'all be makin shit up" ~ Markeith Loyd

  6. #16
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    Update: AG requests execution date 'forthwith' for Mississippi's longest-serving death row inmate

    The Attorney General's Office has filed a motion requesting an execution date "forthwith" -- on or before Aug. 27 -- for Richard Gerald Jordan, convicted in the 1976 kidnapping and killing of a Gulfport banker's wife.

    The motion, filed Tuesday with the state Supreme Court, paves the way for the execution of Jordan, 68, Mississippi's longest-serving death row inmate.

    The Attorney General's Office had agreed to wait until a replacement drug was found for one of the drugs used in the cocktail administered to inmates to kill them.

    Jordan had filed suit to stop his execution by challenging the lethal cocktail, which he says is experimental and could cause great pain. He questioned whether the state could mix a safe and effective form of pentobarbital as an anesthetic.

    When asked if a replacement drug had been found for the cocktail, the Attorney General's office sent the Sun Herald the following statement:

    "The Mississippi Department of Corrections amended its lethal injection protocol today to include the use of midazolam. MDOC can no longer obtain sodium thiopental or pentobarbital due to efforts by death penalty opponents who have put pressure on drug manufacturers to cease production of or to no longer supply drugs to departments of correction for use in lethal injections. The use of midazolam in lethal injections was recently found to be constitutional and not a violation of the 8th Amendment..."

    Jordan killed Edwina Marter execution style Jan. 11., 1976, after calling Gulf National Bank Gulfport and learning her husband, Charles Marter, was a senior official there. Jordan found the Marters' home address, went to the home and kidnapped her as her 3-year-old son slept in a bedroom. He drove to De Soto National Forest and he killed her, but called Charles Marter demanding a $25,000 ransom in exchange for her safe return. He was in escaping a taxi with the ransom money when authorities arrested him in a roadblock.

    Jordan confessed to killing Edwina Marter and told authorities where to find her body.

    http://www.sunherald.com/2015/07/28/...with.html?rh=1

  7. #17
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    According to deathpenaltyinfo.org X-date is set to 08/27.

  8. #18
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    MS death row inmate gets execution date

    JACKSON, MS (Mississippi News Now) - A new execution date has been set for Mississippi's longest serving death row inmate. Richard Gerald Jordan, now 68, is set to die by lethal injection August 27.

    He was sentenced to death for the kidnapping and murder of Edwina Marter back in 1976. Jordan has been on death row for 37 years.

    http://www.msnewsnow.com/story/29656...execution-date

  9. #19
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    Attorney general seeks execution date for death row inmate

    The attorney for a Mississippi death row inmate argues in court briefs that he should not be put to death until a federal judge determines if the state's lethal injection protocol is constitutional.

    David P. Voisin filed papers Wednesday with the Mississippi Supreme Court on behalf of Richard Gerald Jordan opposing the setting of an execution date sought by the state. Attorney General Jim Hood asked the court to set an execution on or before Aug. 27.

    Now 68, Jordan is the oldest inmate on Mississippi's death row, having won three successful appeals only to be resentenced to death. He's also the longest serving, having spent 38 years in death row.

    Jordan was convicted of capital murder committed in the course of kidnapping Edwina Marter in Harrison County in 1976.

    A jury found Jordan guilty of capital murder in 1976 after hearing testimony about how he planned to kidnap Marter, the wife of a senior vice president at Gulf National Bank, and ask for a $50,000 ransom.

    http://www.sfgate.com/news/crime/art...th-6428491.php
    An uninformed opponent is a dangerous opponent.

    "Y'all be makin shit up" ~ Markeith Loyd

  10. #20
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    Family of Metairie woman, murdered in Mississippi in 1976, hopes execution of killer will finally take place

    It’s been almost four decades since 73-year-old Metairie resident Norma de Gruy Wells learned her sister had been found dead on a logging trail in northern Harrison County, Mississippi, after being kidnapped from her home in Gulfport.

    To this day, Wells said, she can’t drive by any woods in Mississippi without thinking about the man who fired the fatal bullet into the back of Edwina Marter’s head.

    Wells admits she isn’t sure if anything will ever help her get over losing her sister in such a violent manner. But she wonders if the execution of the man convicted of killing Marter — Richard Gerald Jordan, now 68 — might be a start.

    Late last month, the Mississippi Attorney General’s Office asked the state’s Supreme Court to set an execution date for Jordan on or before Aug. 27. But Wells still isn’t confident Jordan will receive the punishment he was first sentenced to in 1976.

    Jordan has been given the death penalty four separate times since his arrest and confession to the murder. He successfully challenged his punishment on three occasions, and he is now the longest-serving inmate on Mississippi’s death row.

    Jordan, however, is now out of legal remedies, Mississippi prosecutors argue.

    Lawyers with the MacArthur Justice Center in New Orleans disagree. They say Jordan’s sentence should not be carried out because a drug Mississippi intends to use in the execution doesn’t comply with the state’s laws, among other reasons.

    Wells is reluctant to share her opinion on the merits of either side’s arguments. She doesn’t want an impassioned remark from her to be the reason for another delay.

    But she doesn’t mind describing in blunt terms what the past 39 years have been like.

    “It breaks all of our hearts, all these years, that (Jordan) hasn’t left the picture,” Wells said through tears recently at a Metairie home where she was baby-sitting two grandchildren. “He’s in the picture. But she isn’t. He took her out.”

    Edwina de Gruy grew up with her two sisters and one brother on Bonnabel Boulevard in Metairie, attending St. Catherine of Siena grammar school, Metairie High School and East Jefferson High School.

    In 1958, shortly after getting her diploma from East Jefferson, she married Charles “Chuck” Marter and had two sons with him: Eric, now 49, and Kevin, 42.

    The Marters lived in Metairie for a while before eventually moving to Gulfport, where her husband took a job as a bank executive.

    Jordan, who lived in Hattiesburg, arrived in Gulfport intending to rob a bank because he was out of work and in debt, according to authorities. But the unemployed shipyard worker figured that was too risky, so he called Gulf National Bank and asked who oversaw commercial loans.

    Chuck Marter, he was told.

    Jordan looked up the Marters’ address in the phone book, drove there about 2 p.m. on Jan. 12, 1976, and got into the house by posing as an electric company employee.

    Once inside, Jordan abducted Edwina Marter while the only other person there — her son Kevin, then 3 — slept upstairs.

    Jordan made Marter drive into the DeSoto National Forest. As he would later tell it, he hoped to hold her for $25,000 ransom, police said.

    But while in the woods, Marter tried to run away, Jordan said — so he drew a pistol and fired a bullet he said he believed would whiz over her head.

    The bullet instead entered her skull, killing her.

    Jordan waited a day and called Chuck Marter with the ransom demand, assuring him that his wife was alive and healthy. Marter himself dropped off the $25,000.

    Police officers tried to arrest Jordan when he showed up to collect the ransom, but he briefly escaped before being captured at a roadblock.

    He acknowledged killing Edwina Marter and directed police to her body as well as the murder weapon.

    Eric Marter, who now lives in Lafayette with his wife, said nothing he’s experienced in life has been as painful as having his mother taken away from him when he was a preteen.

    “Growing up without a mom, there’s things you don’t get,” said Marter, who has two sons, ages 14 and 18. “My dad did the best he could, but ... I haven’t experienced anything that hard since then.”

    It’s still difficult for Chuck Marter — who is 78 — to talk about his former wife, Eric Marter said.

    “It was not a topic of conversation with him, ever,” even though the pain he has always felt about losing Edwina has been clear to many, Eric Marter said.

    Norma Wells has never forgotten how she was too shocked — too grief-stricken — to attend her sister’s funeral service at St. Catherine of Siena Church, she said.

    “I spent the night (before the funeral) at her house — I saw her slippers, her makeup, and I just couldn’t,” Wells said. “I just couldn’t do it. I didn’t have the strength.”

    A jury convicted Jordan and condemned him to capital punishment months after Edwina Marter’s slaying. Evidence demonstrated that Jordan had executed her while she knelt in front of him, prosecutors argued.

    Nonetheless, over the coming years, Jordan successfully appealed that punishment several times — only to have it reinstated each time.

    After his third successful appeal, Jordan in 1991 agreed to serve life in prison without the possibility of parole in return for not fighting his sentence again. But he then appealed to the state Supreme Court, arguing the sentence he had agreed to was illegal under state law.

    The Mississippi Supreme Court sided with Jordan in 1997, saying life without parole didn’t become a sentencing option in the state until 1994, so the only choices for him were death or life imprisonment with the possibility of parole.

    Jordan offered to honor the deal for life imprisonment without parole, said Jim Craig, co-director of the MacArthur Center, which is advocating for the death row inmate. But prosecutors argued Jordan had reneged on his earlier promise to stop challenging his punishment, so they secured the death penalty against him a fourth time in 1998.

    The latest in an ensuing series of post-conviction appeals by Jordan failed in June, his claims of vindictive prosecution and ineffective counsel having been rejected by the U.S. Supreme Court.

    Jordan isn’t done fighting, though. The inmate of the state penitentiary at Parchman recently filed a federal lawsuit arguing that the combination of drugs Mississippi has been using in lethal injections included a sedative that hasn’t been proven to be effective and that could cause him great pain before killing him, violating his constitutional protection against cruel and unusual punishment.

    Shortly before moving to set an execution date for Jordan, the Mississippi Attorney General’s Office gave notice that the state Department of Corrections had modified its protocols to include the use of a sedative the U.S. Supreme Court recently determined is legal.

    Some problems still haven’t been settled, though, Craig said. Chief among them, he said, is that Mississippi requires a sedative in a lethal injection to be what’s known as an “ultra short-acting barbiturate” or another similar drug. The new sedative the state plans to use is neither a barbiturate nor similar to one, he said.

    Craig said he and his team have asked the Mississippi Supreme Court to delay setting an execution date until the issues are resolved. If that request is denied, they are prepared to file with that court claims similar to those they made in their still-unresolved federal lawsuit about the constitutionality of Mississippi’s drug combination.

    Craig said he realizes how hurtful the legal wrangling must be to Edwina Marter’s family.

    “Losing a loved one … by the hand of another person is … very stressful and very traumatic — there’s no doubt about that,” Craig said.

    But Jordan is not at fault for how long the legal proceedings have gone on, he said.

    “The reason Mr. Jordan has been on death row for 40 years is because the state has relentlessly cut corners and cheated on the constitutional process Mr. Jordan is entitled to,” Craig said. “This process the state of Mississippi has taken these people through is not therapeutic.”

    Eric Marter agrees it hasn’t been therapeutic but not for the reasons Craig cited.

    “It would be nice — it would be comforting — if what (Jordan’s) entitled to had taken place,” Eric Marter said. “In my opinion, it should’ve happened a long time ago.”

    http://theadvocate.com/news/neworlea...woman-murdered
    An uninformed opponent is a dangerous opponent.

    "Y'all be makin shit up" ~ Markeith Loyd

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