Charles Ray Crawford died by lethal injection Wednesday evening at the Mississippi State Penitentiary over 30 years after he kidnapped, sexually assaulted and murdered Kristie Ray in Tippah County.
The 59-year-old was pronounced dead at 6:15 pm.
“To my family, I love you,” Crawford said as his last words. “I’m at peace. I’ve got God’s peace. … I’ll be in heaven.”
He also addressed Ray’s family, saying, “To the victim’s family, true closure and true peace, you cannot reach that without God.”
His final words were, “Thank you God for giving me the peace that I have.”
In 1994, Crawford was convicted of capital murder and received a death sentence. The next three decades he pursued appeals challenging the sentence, as well as separate sentences for aggravated assault and rape that were used as a basis for the death penalty.
At the time of the killing, Crawford was days away from a separate trial for sexual and physical violence against two teenage girls, cut through the screen to the bedroom of Ray’s home and left a ransom note demanding $15,000.
He took her to a wooded area where he raped the 20-year-old community college student and then stabbed her in the chest. He claimed to experience blackouts but was able to show law enforcement where to find her body.
On Wednesday, Ray’s mother Mary traveled to Parchman to witness the execution, but her father Tommy was not able to be there because of his health, the Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal reported.
Mary Ray did not offer comment after the execution, but last week she told the Tupelo newspaper that witnessing it would not change a thing or bring closure.
“I don’t like the word ‘closure,’” she said. “I have a hole in my heart as big as my heart that will never be closed.”
After the execution, Attorney General Lynn Fitch said her office has pursued justice for the Ray family and Crawford’s other victims and prayed they received long-awaited closure.
Leading up to the execution, Crawford petitioned the U.S Supreme Court to take up his case and halt the execution. The high court denied his final appeal Wednesday evening.
The day of the execution he also filed emergency motions to stay the execution with the Mississippi Supreme Court, which were denied by the afternoon.
Republican Gov. Tate Reeves denied a clemency petition, noting circumstances of the crime and how Crawford did not claim actual innocence.
A consciousness check was performed after the first of the three lethal injection drugs were administered, which prison officials said earlier in the day was required at the state’s most recent execution in June.
In a statement after the execution, Crawford’s attorneys from the Mississippi Office of Capital Post-Conviction Counsel said he was executed without receiving a fair trial.
“Despite a legal system that failed him, Charles Crawford (‘Chuck’) spent every day in prison trying to be the best person, family member, friend and Christian he could be,” the statement read.
Crawford’s surviving family members include a sister, his father and stepmother.
At trial, prosecutors asked several of Crawford’s family members if they still loved him in spite of the crimes and if they wanted him to be executed. They said they love him but don’t support what he did, and that they did not want him to receive the death penalty.
In closing arguments before the death sentence was handed down, prosecutors said the Crawford family shifted blame onto others for his actions and they criticized his mother for a number of actions, including not calling law enforcement earlier, helping him pay for bond and “letting him out” of the house with a shotgun.
During an news hours before the execution Wednesday, Parchman Superintendent Marc McClure said Crawford seemed relaxed and visited with his family and a preacher he requested.
Crawford asked for a double cheeseburger, fries and two desserts – peach cobbler and chocolate ice cream – for his last meal, prison officials said.
Starting in the afternoon, demonstrators gathered outside the prison gates in the Delta community of Parchman and the Governor’s Mansion in Jackson.
Organizations including Death Penalty Action and Catholic Mobilizing Network circulated petitions that called on the governor to stop the execution, citing Crawford’s argument about how his trial attorneys admitted his guilt and pursued an insanity defense against his wishes.
Crawford was the Mississippi inmate executed this year, following the lethal injection of Richard Jordan in June. The state resumed executions in 2021 after a 12-year hiatus.
Thirty six people remain on death row in Mississippi, and the attorney general’s office is seeking execution dates for two – Willie Jerome Manning and Robert Simon Jr.
The Associated Press contributed to the reporting
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