Mississippi set to execute man for killing 16-year-old girl

By MICHAEL GOLDBERG
Associated Press/Report for America

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) – A Mississippi man who pleaded guilty to raping and killing a 16-year-old girl is scheduled to be put to death.

He would become the second inmate executed in Mississippi in 10 years. Fifty-eight-year-old Thomas Edwin Loden Jr. is set to receive a lethal injection at the Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman on Wednesday evening.

He’s been on death row since 2001, when he pleaded guilty to capital murder, rape and four counts of sexual battery against Leesa Marie Gray.

A federal judge declined to block Mississippi from carrying out the execution amid a pending lawsuit from Loden and four other Mississippi death row inmates over the state’s lethal injection protocol.

One of Loden’s attorneys says that Loden doesn’t plan to seek any further delays.