United States: Man executed in Mississippi after nearly 50 years on death row

Richard Jordan, 79, was executed by lethal injection this evening. He had been sentenced to death for the 1976 kidnapping and murder of Edwina Marter, 34, the wife of a bank executive. The execution is the first in Mississippi in two and a half years, with the previous one occurring in December 2022.

This was the second execution scheduled in the United States this week, following that of Thomas Gudinas, 51, on Tuesday in Florida. He had been sentenced to death for the 1994 rape and murder of a woman, Michelle McGrath. In total, 25 executions have been carried out in the United States since the beginning of the year.

The vast majority, 20, were carried out by lethal injection. Three were carried out by nitrogen inhalation—a method first used by Alabama in 2024 and compared by UN experts to a form of "torture"—and two by firing squad in South Carolina, the first time in the United States since 2010.