JACKSON, Miss. - Mississippi hasn’t had an execution in two years, and state Atty. Gen. Jim Hood says he can’t predict when another might occur.
No Mississippi death row appeals are presently pending before the U.S. Supreme Court, he said.
“We usually make predictions on timing based on cases pending before that court,” Hood told The Associated Press last week.
“There is no way to really know an exact time line on any of these type cases,” he said. “They are all making their way through the system at various paces. We have some nearing the end of their normal track of appeals, but there is just no way to know when we might have a case that would warrant the filing of a motion to set an execution date.”
Mississippi’s longest-serving inmates still have appeals moving through state and federal courts, as Hood noted.
Richard Gerald Jordan, 68, has been on death row the longest — 37 years calculated from his date of conviction, according to Department of Corrections’ records. Jordan was convicted of capital murder committed in the course of a kidnapping.
James Billiot, 53, has been on death row 31 years. He was convicted of using a sledgehammer to kill his mother, stepfather and 14-year-old stepsister.
Roger Thorson, 56, has been on death row 25 years. He was sentenced to die for killing a former girlfriend on the Mississippi Gulf Coast.
Source: The Commercial Appeal, Jack Elliott Jr., August 31, 2014
