Dec. 14 (UPI) — Mississippi plans to execute Thomas “Eddie” Loden on Wednesday for the 2000 rape and killing of 16-year-old Leesa Gray.
The execution by lethal injection is scheduled for 6 p.m. CST.
Loden had pleaded guilty to capital murder, rape and sexual battery and was sentenced in 2001. He spent the next 21 years on death row.
The 58-year-old is to be executed at the Mississippi State Penitentiary. He would be the 19th person in the state to be executed this way. The state has executed 128 people since 1940 and 22 since 1983.
Gray was a waitress at her family’s restaurant in northern Itawamba County. On July 22, 2000, she disappeared after leaving the restaurant.
Court records allege Loden kidnapped Gray in his van and for more than four hours he “repeatedly raped and sexually abused [her], videotaping portions of the sadistic acts, before murdering her by way of suffocation and manual strangulation.”
Loden waived the right to a jury trial and pleaded guilty on all six counts in the indictment.
In 2018, Loden joined a lawsuit against the practice of lethal injection, on which the judge has not rule. Earlier this month, two Mississippi Supreme Court judges argued for a stay in his execution because he was a petitioner on the lawsuit.
“Under such circumstances, we should stay his execution until the final resolution of his federal method-of-execution claims,” Justice Jim Kitchens wrote. “Accordingly, I object to the order setting Loden’s execution while he has pending method-of-execution claims in federal court.”
Kitchens was joined by Justice Leslie D. King in his opinion. The court ruled 7-2 in favor of carrying out the execution because Loden had “exhausted” all of his appeals.
In 2021, the state executed David Neal Cox by lethal injection for killing his estranged wife Kim Kirk Cox in 2010. Before his execution, he admitted to killing his sister-in-law Felicia Cox in 2007. He is the most recent person to be executed in Mississippi.
