JACKSON, Miss. — Richard Gerald Jordan, 79, Mississippi’s longest-serving death row inmate, is set to be executed on Wednesday, nearly 48 years after he kidnapped and murdered Edwina Marter, the wife of a bank loan officer, during a failed ransom scheme.
The execution will take place at the Mississippi State Penitentiary in Parchman. Jordan, a Vietnam War veteran who suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), will receive a lethal injection under the state’s controversial three-drug protocol — a method he and others have legally challenged as inhumane.
Jordan would become just the third person executed in Mississippi in the past decade, the most recent being in December 2022.
Jordan was sentenced to death in 1976 for the premeditated murder of Edwina Marter. At the time of the crime, Jordan called the Gulf National Bank in Gulfport, asked for loan officer Charles Marter, then used a phone book to locate the Marters’ residence. He kidnapped Edwina Marter, drove her to a wooded area, and shot her to death. Afterward, he called her husband and demanded $25,000 in ransom, falsely claiming she was still alive.
The couple’s son, Eric Marter, who was 11 at the time, said neither he, his brother, nor their father would attend the execution.
“I know what he did. He wanted money, and he couldn’t take her with him. So he did what he did,” Eric Marter said.
“He needs to be punished.”
Jordan’s legal saga spanned four trials and countless appeals over nearly five decades. On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court denied his final petition, which argued that his right to an independent mental health expert had been violated.
Krissy Nobile, director of Mississippi’s Office of Capital Post-Conviction Counsel, said Jordan’s defense was deeply flawed.
“His jury never got to hear about his Vietnam experiences or the psychological impact of three tours in war,” she noted.
A clemency petition submitted to Gov. Tate Reeves urged mercy on the basis of Jordan’s war trauma, arguing that his PTSD was a contributing factor in the crime and was ignored at trial.
“We know so much more today about war trauma and how it affects the brain and behavior,” said Franklin Rosenblatt, president of the National Institute of Military Justice, who authored the petition.
Still, the family of the victim maintains Jordan acted out of greed, not trauma.
As of early 2025, Jordan was one of 22 individuals still on death row in the U.S. for crimes committed in the 1970s, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. His case marks another chapter in what is becoming the most active year for executions since 2015.
