Richard Gerald Jordan (born May 25, 1946[1]) is an American man on death row in Mississippi for the 1976 murder of 34-year-old Edwina Marter, the wife of a bank executive.
He called Gulf National Bank in Gulfport and learned the name of the commercial loan officer, Chuck Marter.
He fatally shot her in the De Soto National Forest before calling her husband and attempting to collect ransom money from him.
His most recent legal objections are related to questions of prosecutorial vindictiveness and whether Mississippi's execution drug cocktail constitutes cruel and unusual punishment.
He called the Gulf National Bank from a payphone and asked to speak to the person in charge of issuing commercial loans.
[2] On January 12, 1976, Jordan drove to Marter's home pretending to be an electric company worker who needed to check circuit breakers.
Jordan had set up the initial meeting as a test; he was monitoring the location from the De Soto National Forest and noticed the law enforcement presence immediately.
Jordan ran the sheriff's office vehicle into a ditch and kept driving even when shots were fired at his car.
Still, a Gulfport police officer found him in a taxi at about 1:00 pm the same day, arrested him, and recovered most of the ransom money.
[11] Later that year, the U.S. Supreme Court held that automatic death sentences constituted cruel and unusual punishment, and Jordan received a new trial.
[12] A second trial began in Pascagoula on February 28, 1977, with separate phases to determine guilt or innocence and decide on punishment.
[15] Owen was engaged in private practice by this time, but he agreed to act as a special prosecutor at the request of the Marter family.
[12] Jordan testified at the new hearing, explaining that desperation led him to the crime, as he owed money for a car, a boat, department store credit, and other expenses.
The defense also called character witnesses, including a death row guard and some of Jordan's relatives and friends.
Prosecutors also played a tape of Jordan's statement to a Harrison County investigator in which he explained that while he had intended to come to Biloxi to look for work, he thought of the ransom plot and carried it out before he filled out any job applications.
[12] Jordan's legal team challenged his third death sentence because he had been barred from introducing mitigating testimony related to his good behavior in prison.
[21] At that hearing, Jordan's lawyers, Tom Sumrall and Wade Baine, called twelve witnesses, including family members and prison employees.
The jury foreman referred to the decision as a "no brainer" and commented on Jordan's apparent lack of remorse and the 22 years that had elapsed since the initial verdict.
U.S. Supreme Court precedent does not require the defendant to prove the case's underlying merits before obtaining a COA.
[24] Additionally, states have had difficulty obtaining the drugs typically used in executions, such as the fast-acting barbiturates sodium thiopental and pentobarbital.
[25] Death penalty legislation in Mississippi required using a fast-acting barbiturate or similar drug in the execution cocktail.
[24] The Mississippi Department of Corrections (MDOC) made plans to utilize compounding (the preparation of a drug from raw ingredients) to produce pentobarbital or another sedative, midazolam.
After an August 2015 lawsuit filed on behalf of Jordan and another inmate, a federal district judge blocked MDOC's use of compounded drugs.
Before this ruling, the state's attorney general, Jim Hood, had asked the Mississippi Supreme Court to issue an execution date for Jordan.
[24] The state passed a new death penalty statute in 2017 requiring a new three-drug execution cocktail: a sedative or anesthetic that can render a person unconscious; a muscle paralytic like vecuronium; and potassium chloride or a similar drug.
Under the 2017 statute, if lethal injection is deemed unconstitutional or is otherwise unfeasible, the state may use execution by nitrogen asphyxiation, the electric chair, or firing squad.
[26] Shortly after the 2017 changes to the death penalty statute, Jordan challenged the state's use of midazolam on the grounds that it does not render a person unconscious.
[29] In early October 2024, the Mississippi Attorney General, Lynn Fitch, filed a motion with the state supreme court to set an execution date within 28 days.