Mississippi to execute Thomas Edwin Loden Jr, 58, for 2000 murder and rape of 16-year-old Leesa Marie Gray
JACKSON, MISSISSIPPI: Thomas Edwin Loden Jr, a Mississippi man, will be executed on Wednesday evening, December 14, for raping and killing a teenager. The incident took place on June 22, 2000, when Leesa Marie Gray’s car had a flat tire on a rural road as she left work after dark. He will now become the second inmate to be executed in Mississippi in 10 years.
He will receive a lethal injection at the Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman, after being on death row since 2001. The man pleaded guilty to capital murder, rape, and four counts of sexual battery. A federal judge declined to further block the state from carrying out the execution, in a late-night ruling on December 7. There’s also been a pending lawsuit from Loden and four Mississippi death row inmates over the state’s lethal injection protocol. “It is not Mr. Loden’s intent at this time to make any legal challenges,” one of Loden’s attorneys told The Associated Press.
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Gray, 16, worked as a waitress at her uncle’s restaurant in the northeast region of the state, and she was soon to enter her senior year of high school, reports ABC News. After Gray’s vehicle broke down, Loden, a Marine Corps recruiter, noticed her stranded along with his relatives on the road around 10.45 pm. In an interview with the investigators, Loden stopped and started talking with the teenager, “Don’t worry. I’m a Marine. We do this kind of stuff.”
“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,” as per court documents on the afternoon of June 23, June 2000. After he confessed to his wrongdoings in September 2001 Loden had said to the victim’s friends and family during his sentencing, “I hope you may have some sense of justice when you leave here today.”
Wanda Farris, mother of Gray refers to her daughter as a ‘happy-go-lucky, always smiling’ teenager. She wished to be a teacher one day, “She wasn’t perfect, now, mind you. But she strived to do right.” “Clearly, something in him snapped for him to commit such a horrific crime. Mr. Loden was immediately remorseful. Shouldn’t there be room for grace and mercy in such a situation?,” said Mitzi Magleby, a spokesperson for the Mississippi chapter of Ignite Justice, an organization that advocates for criminal justice reform.