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#Post#: 542--------------------------------------------------
~ Thomas Loden, Jr., 14Dec22, (MS) ~
By: BuzzC Date: November 17, 2022, 6:47 pm
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Execution date set for Mississippi man accused of killing teen
in 2000--
Thursday, November 17th, 2022
[IMG]
HTML https://www.cbs42.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/81/2022/11/Thomas-Edwin-Loden-Jr..jpg?w=640&h=480&crop=1[/img]
JACKSON, Miss. (WJTV) — The Mississippi Supreme Court set an
execution date for the man accused of killing a 16-year-old girl
in 2000.
According to court documents, a December 14 execution date has
been set for Thomas Edwin Loden Jr.
Prosecutors said Loden kidnapped Leesa Marie Gray, who was
stranded on the side of a road in northern Mississippi’s
Itawamba County on June 22, 2000. The documents said Loden spent
four hours raping and sexually battering Gray before suffocating
and strangling her to death.
Gray disappeared on her way home from working as a waitress at
her family’s restaurant in the Dorsey community. Prosecutors
said she was last seen driving out of the restaurant parking
lot. Relatives found her car hours later with her purse still
inside and the hazard lights flashing. Her body was found the
next day in Loden’s van.
Loden was indicted for capital murder, **** and four counts of
sexual battery. He waived his right to a jury and pled guilty to
all six charges.
The Circuit Court of Itawamba County sentenced Loden to death.
He was also sentenced to 30 years in the custody of the
Mississippi Department of Corrections (MDOC) for **** and 30
years for each of his four sexual battery convictions. The
circuit court ordered his sentences to run consecutively.
Prosecutors said Loden challenged his conviction and sentenced
many times, but he exhausted all state and federal remedies.
Mississippi’s most recent execution was in November 2021. A
lethal injection was given to David Neal Cox, who had pleaded
guilty to killing his estranged wife and sexually assaulting her
young daughter as her mother lay dying in 2012.
HTML https://www.cbs42.com/regional/mississippi-news/execution-date-set-for-mississippi-man-accused-of-killing-teen-in-2000/
#Post#: 549--------------------------------------------------
Re: ~ Thomas Loden, Jr., 14Dec22, (MS) ~
By: BuzzC Date: December 14, 2022, 6:54 pm
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Mississippi executes man for rape, murder of teen girl--
Wednesday, December 14th, 2022
JACKSON, Miss. – A man who pleaded guilty to raping and killing
a 16-year-old girl was put to death by lethal injection in
Mississippi on Wednesday evening, becoming the second inmate
executed in the state in 10 years.
A coroner pronounced Thomas Edwin Loden Jr., 58, dead at 6:12
p.m. at the Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman. The
manner of death had been the subject of Loden's final attempt to
stave off the execution.
He has been on death row since 2001, when he pleaded guilty to
capital murder, rape and four counts of sexual battery against
Leesa Marie Gray.
Earlier this month, a federal judge declined to block
Mississippi from carrying out the execution amid a pending
lawsuit from Loden and four Mississippi death row inmates over
the state’s lethal injection protocol. Mississippi’s most recent
execution was in November 2021.
Mark McDonald, one of Loden’s attorneys, said Wednesday morning
that Loden didn't plan to seek any further delays in the
execution, scheduled for 7 p.m.
Officials checked on Loden at 11:00 a.m. Wednesday. “He's in
good spirits,” Karei McDonald, executive deputy commissioner of
the Mississippi Department of Corrections, said at a news
conference.
Officials said they spoke to Loden again at approximately 12:45
p.m. He was “remorseful to the family,” they said.
During the summer ahead of what should have been Gray's senior
year of high school, she had worked as a waitress at her uncle’s
restaurant in northeast Mississippi. On June 22, 2000, she left
work after dark and became stranded with a flat tire on a rural
road.
Loden, a Marine Corps recruiter with relatives in the area,
encountered Gray on the road around 10:45 p.m. He stopped and
began speaking with the teenager about the flat tire. “Don’t
worry. I’m a Marine. We do this kind of stuff,” he said.
Loden told investigators he became angry after Gray allegedly
said she would never want to be a Marine, and that he ordered
her into his van. He spent four hours sexually assaulting her
before strangling and suffocating her, according to an interview
he gave investigators.
Court records show that on the afternoon of June 23, 2000,
“Loden was discovered lying by the side of a road with the words
‘I’m sorry’ carved into his chest and apparent self-inflicted
lacerations on his wrists.”
After pleading guilty in September 2001, Loden told Gray’s
friends and family during his sentencing: “I hope you may have
some sense of justice when you leave here today.”
Wanda Farris, Gray's mother, described her daughter as a
“happy-go-lucky, always smiling” teenager who aspired to become
an elementary school teacher.
“She wasn’t perfect, now, mind you,” Farris said. “But she
strived to do right.”
Farris plans on attending the execution Wednesday.
In 2015, attorneys for the Roderick & Solange MacArthur Justice
Center sued the Mississippi prison system on behalf of two death
row inmates, saying the state’s lethal injection protocol is
inhumane. Loden and two other Mississippi death row inmates
later joined as plaintiffs.
The Mississippi Department of Corrections revealed in court
papers in July 2021 that it had acquired three drugs for its
lethal injection protocol: midazolam, which is a sedative;
vecuronium bromide, which paralyzes the muscles; and potassium
chloride, which stops the heart.
Jim Craig, a MacArthur Center attorney, said at a November court
hearing that since 2019, only Alabama, Oklahoma, Mississippi and
Tennessee have conducted executions using a three-drug protocol.
According to the Death Penalty Information Center, 27 states
have the death penalty. Craig said a majority of death-penalty
states and the federal government used a three-drug protocol in
2008, but the federal government and most of those states have
since started using one drug.
In November, Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey sought a pause in executions
and ordered a “top-to-bottom” review of the state’s capital
punishment system after a series of failed lethal injections.
Jeworski Mallett, deputy commissioner of institutions for the
Department of Corrections, told reporters that Mississippi has
done "mock executions and drills" on a monthly basis to avoid a
botched execution.
A week before Loden’s scheduled execution, U.S. District Judge
Henry Wingate handed down a ruling saying the execution could
happen even while the lawsuit is pending. He wrote that the U.S.
Supreme Court had upheld a three-drug lethal injection protocol
as recently as seven years ago in a case from Oklahoma.
There are 36 inmates on death row in Mississippi.
Farris told the AP on Friday that she forgave Loden years ago,
but she did not believe his apology.
“I don’t particularly want to see somebody die,” Farris said.
“But I do believe in the death penalty. ... I do believe in
justice.”
8)
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