A prison reform advocate on Tuesday publicly implored Republican Gov. Tate Reeves to halt the impending execution of Richard Jordan, Mississippi’s oldest and longest-serving death row inmate.
“I’m here today to ask our Christian governor to do the Christian thing and show mercy – mercy on a man that has spent 49 years in prison and has done everything he could do to atone for his crime,” Mitzi Magleby said outside the Mississippi Supreme Court.
Jordan, 79, is scheduled to be executed by lethal injection Wednesday evening at the Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman for the 1976 kidnapping and killing of a woman in coastal Harrison County.
Richard Jordan Credit: MDOCReeves declined to block the only two executions Mississippi has carried out since he became governor – one in 2021 and one in 2022. The governor’s office did not immediately respond to an email from Mississippi Today on Tuesday seeking comment on Jordan’s case.
Jordan was first convicted in 1976 for kidnapping and killing Edwina Marter in Harrison County, and it took four trials until a death sentence stuck in 1998.
One of Marter’s sons said Jordan should have been executed long ago.
“I don’t want him to get what he wants,” Eric Marter, who is 59 and lives in Lafayette, Louisiana, told Mississippi Today. “If you want to spend the rest of your life in jail, then I would rather you not get that, and if that means you get executed, you get executed.”
High school yearbook picture of Edwina Marter, circa 1955. Credit: Courtesy of Eric MarterThe 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Tuesday denied Jordan’s request for a stay of execution. Jordan had a separate request for a stay awaiting consideration at the U.S. Supreme Court.
The appeals court wrote that Jordan has received repeated review of his claims in state and federal courts for nearly 50 years.
At this point, “finality acquires an added moral dimension,” the appeals court wrote. “Only with an assurance of real finality can the State execute its moral judgment in a case. Only with real finality can the victims of crime move forward knowing the moral judgment will be carried out.”
Magleby, who has met Jordan, said he has been a model prisoner and is extremely remorseful. She said she believes life without parole would be a sufficient and humane punishment.
“I believe that it is more of a penalty to do life without parole,” she said. “The death penalty gives you an out-date. Life without parole does not.”
She also delivered a petition asking Reeves to prevent Jordan’s execution. That petition had more than 3,000 signatures.
Mitzi Magleby holds a cover letter to Gov. Tate Reeves calling for a halt to the execution of Richard Gerald Jordan, with pages of supporters’ signatures behind it, during a press conference outside the Mississippi Supreme Court on Tuesday, June 24, 2025. Credit: Eric Shelton/Mississippi TodayThe news conference was put on by Magleby and Death Penalty Action, who are supporters of Jordan’s cause.
If Jordan’s execution goes forward as scheduled, supporters plan to hold protest vigils Wednesday outside Parchman and the Governor’s Mansion and online.
Human rights group Amnesty International released a statement Tuesday opposing the execution.
“Governor Tate Reeves is the only person with the power to spare Jordan’s life,” the group said. “He must use this power to halt this execution, commute Richard Jordan’s sentence and work towards ending the death penalty in Mississippi more broadly.”
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