Mississippi set to execute man for killing 16-year-old girl

By MICHAEL GOLDBERG
Associated Press/Report for America

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — A Mississippi man who pleaded guilty to raping and killing a 16-year-old girl is scheduled to be put to death. He would become the second inmate executed in Mississippi in 10 years. Thomas Edwin Loden Jr., 58, is set to receive a lethal injection at the Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman at 6 p.m. Wednesday. He’s been on death row since 2001, when he pleaded guilty to capital murder, rape and four counts of sexual battery against Leesa Marie Gray. A federal judge declined to block Mississippi from carrying out the execution amid a pending lawsuit from Loden and four other Mississippi death row inmates over the state’s lethal injection protocol.