Mississippi judge allows execution of murderer Thomas "Eddie" Loden to happen next week

A federal judge has declined to delay the execution of convicted murderer and rapist Thomas "Eddie" Loden, who is scheduled to be put to death Dec. 14 at the Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman.

Loden's attorneys had sought a stay from U.S. District Court Judge Henry Wingate because he is part of an ongoing years-long lawsuit challenging the state's lethal injection protocol.

Though Wingate acknowledged that the lawsuit, which was first filed in 2015, is unresolved, it does not grant Loden protection from his sentence, especially to a crime to which he pled guilty and has exhausted all legal options for appeal. Furthermore, Wingate wrote in his more than 30-page order, that granting a stay would likely delay that sentence for years, not merely months like attorneys for Loden had claimed.

"Loden contends that since he is a plaintiff in this underlying lawsuit challenging Mississippi’s lethal injection mode of execution, the same procedure Mississippi intends to use to put him to death, he should not be executed before a decision on the constitutionality is rendered," Wingate wrote. "Should this court adopt that reasoning, Loden’s future execution date would be uncertain, but years away. If this court were to rule that the lethal injection mode is unconstitutional, Mississippi could still resort to his execution under one of three alternative modes of execution, which chosen procedure would surely be attacked in a new lawsuit."

Loden and four other people on death row are challenging the state's three drug protocol for lethal injections. This protocol, which was once used by the majority of states that carry out executions, is now only used by Mississippi and Oklahoma, according to Jim Craig, director of the Louisiana office of the MacArthur Justice Center and former Mississippi-based attorney who is representing the condemned. This comes after Alabama and Tennessee, state's which also used a three drug protocol, recently paused all executions. Most other states that actively carry out executions, and the federal government, have switched to a one drug protocol.

Craig said there have been issues in a number of states with the three drug protocol because it requires precise timing between the first and second injection. The first injection is a paralytic, which ensures that the person being executed does not feel pain from the second and third. If it is not timed correctly, there can be significant problems, Craig said.

In a November hearing, Craig linked the shift, from using three execution drugs to using one, to an "evolving standard of decency," citing a 1958 U.S. Supreme Court case that said such factors must be considered in cases relating to the Eighth Amendment.

Wingate did not buy that argument.

"This shift to a one-drug method, argues Loden, represents the “evolving standard of decency” standard. This court simply is not persuaded that Loden (or the other Plaintiffs) has shown a substantial likelihood of success on this contention. The statistics relied upon by Loden could point to a number of other factors, for instance, the inability to secure the death drugs in sufficient quantities," Wingate wrote.

Indeed, a lack of supply was one of the key reasons the state cited for sticking with the three drug protocol. Gerald Kucia, special assistant to Attorney General Lynn Fitch, argued last month that states using a single drug have had trouble acquiring it. An affidavit written by Mississippi Correction Commissioner Burl Cain and filed with the case maintained that Mississippi does have adequate supply of the three drugs it uses, and that any expired drugs that were previously reported to have been in the "drug room" at Parchman have been destroyed. The drugs being held there now do not expire until 2024, at the earliest, according to the affidavit.

Loden pleaded guilty in 2001 to kidnapping 16-year-old Leesa Gray from the side of the road, raping her and strangling her to death. Loden would later challenge that conviction in state and federal courts, claiming that he did not receive adequate legal counsel at the time, and that his attorneys did not consider how various events in his life could have led to mental illness. Each of those challenges were unsuccessful.

Gray's mother, Wanda Farris, has been waiting for more than two decades to see her child's killer put to death.

"I'm just tired of it hanging over our heads. I'm just ready to get it over with. It's not that I haven't moved on in my life, I have, but you've got this hanging over your head, and I have had it for 22 years," Farris said.

Farris plans to attend Loden's execution as a witness.

"Am I going to go in there and enjoy watching that man die? No, I'm not. I've never seen anybody die before in my life. I haven't. I don't know how that's going to make me feel," Farris said. "Put it on record. I'm not going to enjoy it. I'm not that vengeful. Everybody deserves a chance. The thing that people don't realize, Eddie Loden made that choice 22 years ago, to do what he did."

The decision from Wingate came down after delays, which Farris called "frustrating." The judge had announced on Monday that a decision would be coming the next day, but it was not filed into the record until late Wednesday night. Wingate's court has a history of backlogs and delays, but the judge said at the November hearing that he would move as quickly as possible due to the short amount of time before Loden was scheduled to die.

Loden's death, scheduled for Dec. 14, will be the second execution in the state of Mississippi in just over a year. In November 2021, Mississippi executed someone for the first time in nine years. The condemned in that case, David Cox, had asked for the state to go forward with his execution.

This article originally appeared on Mississippi Clarion Ledger: Judge allows execution of Leesa Gray murderer to go forward next week