Advocates who oppose the death penalty and are organizing to halt further executions in the state stood outside the Mississippi Supreme Court Wednesday to send a message to the justices and the attorney general: Stand down.
They said Mississippi is headed down a deadly road with the scheduled June 25 execution of 79-year-old Richard Jordan, the state’s oldest and longest-serving death row inmate. In the past several years, Attorney General Lynn Fitch has also asked the court to set execution dates for Willie Manning, Robert Simon and Charles Crawford.
“These folks on death row are humans, and we can’t continue to be human if we continue to have a fixation on snuffing them out,” said the Rev. Jeff Hood, a spiritual adviser to death row inmates across the country who has also communicated with those in Mississippi’s death row.
The Arkansas resident has witnessed nine executions since 2022, which is when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that they could be allowed into the chamber if the inmate requested it.
His work is based on meeting the death row inmates where they are and helping members of the public see that executions don’t have to be the answer. He said his faith is centered around the idea of helping “who is ostracized the most” as a way to serve God.
Hood directly addressed justices of the Mississippi Supreme Court and elected officials like Fitch and Gov. Tate Reeves, saying they can support and approve executions, but they have never had to witness one or carry one out.
He described the worst execution he witnessed, that of Kenneth Smith in Alabama, who struggled against the restraints and his veins looked like “a million ants under his skin.” That sentence was carried out using nitrogen gas – an execution method Mississippi has allowed if lethal injection is not available.
For lethal injections, he saw how the drugs flowed in through a line into the person’s body and how their breathing began to labor. Jordan is a lead plaintiff in a federal lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the drugs used for lethal injection.
Mitzi Magleby, a Mississippi-based prison reform advocate, began to tear up when she shared how a looming execution weighs heavily on the death row inmates. It’s extremely depressing and it affects their mental health, but she said they try their best to keep their spirits up.
She said to consider the person Jordan has become since entering prison nearly 50 years ago. He’s held a job for most of that time, he’s stayed out of trouble and has changed for the better.
“We know his life is worth saving,” she said.
Abraham Bonowitz, co-founder and executive director of Death Penalty Action, hosted a virtual version of the Wednesday press conference. He noted that Jordan is one of six people who have a scheduled execution in the month of June.
Bonowitz talked about how Jordan is a Vietnam War veteran with three tours of duty, and with the recent passing of Memorial Day, he asked people to consider the effect of combat.
Jordan returned from the war and didn’t receive the support and services, which Bonowitz said is an experience of other veterans, some of whom ended up in prison or worse. A 2015 Death Penalty Information Center report estimated that at least 300 veterans were on death row.
Jordan asked the U.S. Supreme Court in March to hear his case and that petition for writ of certiorari is awaiting a decision. That petition centers around his access to a mental health expert separate from the prosecution to develop and present sentencing mitigation as an indigent defendant, which was established as a constitutional right through the U.S. Supreme Court’s Ake v. Oklahoma decision.
The petition states he was not diagnosed as suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder resulting from his combat service in Vietnam, but instead incorrectly as having antisocial personality disorder.
Hood said he’s built relationships not just with the death row inmates, but also their families and sometimes the family members of victims. He and Magleby said they consider the impact on families.
“I think 50 years is torture for any family that’s been through this,” Hood said when asked about the family of Edwina Marter, the victim of Jordan’s crime.
With death penalty cases, families are put through years worth of appeals and recurring news stories, which isn’t always the case for those sentenced to life without parole, Magley and Hood said.
Death Penalty Action has started a petition to stop Jordan’s execution, and as of Wednesday it has received 840 signatures. It’s a similar petition that the organization uses to collect signatures for all pending executions, including other death row inmates whose executions have not yet been scheduled.
Bonowitz said the plan is to deliver signatures of the petition to the governor and the organization is encouraging people to call his office asking for him to halt the execution.
Members of churches and community groups can also take action by ringing bells at the time of the scheduled execution, which is through a project called For Whom the Bells Tolls.
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