Mississippi Set to Execute Man for 2000 Rape and Murder of 16-Year-Old

Thomas Edwin Loden Jr. will be the second person in 10 years to be executed in the state

Thomas Edwin Loden Jr. Mississippi Department of Corrections via AP

Mississippi is set to execute only the second person in the past decade on Dec. 14, a date recently set by the Mississippi Supreme Court. A federal judge rejected an appeal to halt the execution, as the inmate is currently suing the state over its use of three lethal injection drugs.

Thomas Edwin Loden Jr., 58, will be executed by lethal injection the evening of Dec. 14. Loden has been on death row since 2001 when he pleaded guilty to capital murder, rape, and four counts of sexual battery against a 16-year-old girl in 2000.

The victim, Leesa Marie Gray, was driving home from work after dark and was stranded on the road with a flat tire when Loden arrived, according to court records. Loden told Gray he was a Marine and said he could fix her tire for her.

Loden said he asked Gray if she ever thought about being a Marine, to which she replied “that would be the last thing” she wants to do with her life. Loden said this made him “very upset” and he became violent and told the girl to get into his van.

For the next four hours, Loden repeatedly raped and assaulted Gray while videotaping portions of his crimes, before murdering the teenager by suffocation and manual strangulation.

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, court records show. Soon after, Gray’s nude body, with her hands and feet bound, was found in Loden’s van, pushed under a folded-down seat.

Loden waived his right to a jury trial and sentencing while pleading guilty to all six counts in the indictment. At the time, he addressed the court and apologized to the friends and family of Gray, stating “I hope you may have some sense of justice when you leave here today.”

Wanda Farris sits beside a picture of her daughter, 16-year-old Leesa Gray, that hangs inside Comer's Restaurant in Dorsey, Miss., on Dec. 8, 2022. Thomas Wells/The Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal via AP

U.S. District Judge Henry Wingate on Dec. 7 ruled against Loden’s request to stay the execution amid the lawsuit, citing precedent. He noted higher courts had allowed executions while lawsuits were pending within the past seven years.

“Importantly, the State of Mississippi executed David Neal Cox approximately one year ago, using a three-drug midazolam protocol,” Judge Wingate wrote. “This court has before it no evidence that the State incurred any problems in carrying out Cox’s execution using its lethal injection protocol.”

Mississippi carried out its first execution in nine years in November 2021. A total of 36 inmates are on death row in Mississippi.

Lethal Injection Protocol

Neighboring states Tennessee and Alabama join Mississippi and Oklahoma as the only other states to have conducted executions using a three-drug method since 2019.

The three-drug method, according to the Mississippi Department of Corrections, includes drugs midazolam, which is a sedative; vecuronium bromide, which paralyzes the muscles; and potassium chloride, which stops the heart.

Bottles of the sedative midazolam at a hospital pharmacy in Oklahoma City on July 25, 2014. AP Photo

Mississippi and other states have had trouble finding lethal injection drugs as pharmaceutical companies in the United States and Europe began blocking their use for executions.

Mississippi Corrections Commissioner Burl Cain said the drugs to be used in Loden’s execution were the same as those used in the 2021 execution. Cain did not tell The Associated Press where the department obtained them, but said in a sworn statement on Nov. 30 that the state had sufficient quantities to move forward with the execution of Loden.

The Roderick & Solange MacArthur Justice Center filed suit against Mississippi’s prison system in 2015, calling the lethal injection protocol inhumane. Loden is one of four Mississippi death row inmates joining the suit to challenge the state’s lethal injection protocol.

An attorney for the MacArthur Justice Center told The Associated Press last month 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.

Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey requested a pause in executions to review the state’s execution systems after a series of failed lethal injections, according to The Associated Press.