Overview

• Richard Gerald Jordan, a 79-year-old Vietnam veteran, was pronounced dead by lethal injection at Mississippi State Penitentiary in Parchman at 6:16 p.m. on June 25, 2025.
• His U.S. Supreme Court appeal for a stay was denied Wednesday afternoon after Governor Tate Reeves declined a clemency petition filed June 16.
• Jordan’s conviction for the January 1976 kidnapping and murder of Edwina Marter endured four trials and numerous appeals over nearly five decades.
• His attorneys argued that severe PTSD from three back-to-back tours in Vietnam was never presented at trial and that Mississippi’s three-drug execution protocol is inhumane.
• The execution was Mississippi’s third in the past decade and followed a Florida execution the previous day, contributing to a national pace not seen since 2015.