Inside a Mississippi execution: Clarion Ledger reporter recounts what it was like

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08-07-2025

Editor's note: This is the latest edition of Curious Mississippi, a service to the readers of the Clarion Ledger. Today we answer, What is it like to cover an execution? Other questions answered by Curious Mississippi have surrounded judicial appointments, recycling, potholes, UMMC construction, cicadas and the international nature of the Jackson airport. Readers can submit questions by email to [e-mail] and editors will pick out the best and reporters will answer them in an upcoming edition.
The visitation center at the Mississippi State Penitentiary in Parchman has no windows, just fluorescent lighting, plastic chairs and tables in a cafeteria-style room.
I could technically step outside, but only through a single entrance and doing so meant going through the full security screening all over again — it didn't feel worth it. A few friendly prison staff walked around, quietly watching us. The Wi-Fi cut in and out.
All the while, I returned to the thought I was there to watch someone die.
By 5:30 p.m. Wednesday, June 25, I had been sitting in the windowless visitation center for nearly 5 hours. I waited alongside six other journalists from throughout the state to witness the scheduled execution of Richard Jordan, 79, a convicted murderer who had spent the past 48 years on Mississippi's death row for the murder of Edwina Marter. A wife and mother of two, Marter was kidnapped by Jordan from her family home in 1976 and killed.
This was my first time covering an execution, and from what I gathered in conversations with other journalists, it's not the kind of assignment anyone looks forward to. It's grim. You don't know what to expect. The weight of what's about to happen settles over you — I felt it most during the 3-hour drive from Jackson to Parchman that morning. But I kept thinking about something the late war correspondent Marie Colvin once said: our job as journalists is to "bear witness."
I applied for permission to attend the execution in early June, as the state finalized preparations and Jordan's attorneys filed a flurry of last-minute appeals to halt the execution.
The process to watch an execution is straightforward bureaucracy: you apply to the Mississippi Department of Corrections, providing your name, date of birth, Social Security number, phone number, email and the media outlet you work for. Then you wait. MDOC later notifies you if you've been selected.
I was met at the prison by Clarion Ledger photojournalist Lauren Witte, who wasn't allowed to photograph the execution. She came to document the protests outside the prison and to capture photos and video from the press conferences by prison officials before and after the execution.
I arrived an hour before a 2 p.m. press conference held by MDOC officials. The visitation center, located near the prison's main entrance, served as our staging area. After passing through airport-style security, I settled in. Finger sandwiches, chips, cookies and cinnamon rolls were laid out to hold us over while we waited. MDOC Commissioner Burl Cain came in to shake everyone's hand before the press conference, where officials shared what Jordan had ordered for his last meal. The press conference was over in minutes.
For the next 4 hours, reporters fiddled with their laptops, others scrolled through their phones. One reporter read, some paced the room and made edits to the stories they would file once it was all over. Eventually, an MDOC spokesperson came to gather those selected to witness the execution. We went through security once more and were told we couldn't bring any electronics. Instead, we were handed a pad and pen to record our observations. Then the officials herded us into a police van and drove toward the layers of barbed-wire fencing surrounding Unit 17 — the prison's execution chamber.
Unit 17 — the same building where Freedom Riders, arrested for civil rights activism, were held in 1961 — looks like a small prison within the larger one. It's a one-story building set back from the main road, with a long driveway leading up to it. Our van sat idling on that road for about 5 minutes, the air conditioning barely working, while corrections staff made final security checks. The driver then pulled up to the back entrance.
We parked there for another minute before being told to exit the van and led single-file into one of the execution observation rooms, which had about 15 seats. Three in the front were already occupied — by Jordan's wife, one of his attorneys and his spiritual adviser. The rest of us filled in the remaining seats. A thin curtain blocked our view of the execution chamber, but we could hear people moving around behind it. Once we were seated, a prison official reminded us that there was to be no talking. Anyone who broke that rule, he said, would be escorted out of the building.
Then he shut the door. The room went black — so dark I couldn't even see the notes I'd scribbled on the pad they gave me. No one spoke. The only sounds were the muffled shuffling of MDOC officials behind the window and the quiet sobs of Jordan's wife in the front row. The room was tense and still. We had been waiting for hours, and now we were just minutes away from the moment we had come for. The anticipation was real. I had no idea what I was about to see once that curtain rose.
At exactly 6 p.m., the curtain lifted. Jordan was lying on his back, covered in a white sheet up to his neck, his arms stretched out to each side. Four MDOC officials surrounded him: Cain stood over his right shoulder, Regional Superintendent Marc McClure over his left, and two others were positioned near his feet — one of them a woman with a stethoscope around her neck. McClure asked if Jordan had any final words, and he gave them while reporters frantically wrote down notes on the pads. Then the lethal injection began.
It's not like someone comes in with a big needle and injects him. In fact, Jordan's IV wasn't even visible. I could not tell you where the drugs were administered, but the three-drug protocol began with a sedative. Within moments, Jordan visibly drifted off to sleep — though his eyes remained partially open and his mouth fell slightly agape.
I was sitting in the back row, so I stood to make my observations. You could hear the scribbling of reporters taking notes, occasionally glancing up at the clock mounted on the wall of the execution chamber. MDOC officials observed quietly. At 6:08, a man wearing sunglasses and a hat — looking almost like he was in disguise — entered to perform the court-mandated consciousness check and declared Jordan unconscious. By law, MDOC is not allowed to reveal the identity of the man who conducted the unconsciousness check. Additional drugs followed.
Eight minutes later, at 6:16, the woman with the stethoscope checked Jordan's vitals and pronounced him dead. The curtain slowly dropped, and once again, we were sitting in total darkness.
It may feel strange to put it this way, but the execution unfolded quietly and without incident. There were no visible complications — none of the convulsions or delays often associated with botched executions. Everything about the process had been orderly, almost mechanical. Each moment planned, each movement accounted for. The calm didn't make it any easier to watch.
We sat in the dark for a few more minutes until an official led us back to the police van. On the ride back to the visitation center, reporters talked — piecing together the timeline, already thinking about the stories we'd soon have to file. It felt strange, but also familiar — slipping back into work mode after something so heavy.
Back at the visitation center, we waited for a press conference. Commissioner Cain and McClure gave brief remarks. Members of Marter's family also spoke, offering a statement that was somber but resolute. "She was loved and needed," said her nephew. Marter's husband and sons did not attend the execution.
Afterward, officials quickly began ushering us out. We were told to gather our things and leave the property. Just like that, it was over — hours of waiting, a life ended and then the parking lot.
Contact Charlie Drape at [e-mail].
This article originally appeared on Mississippi Clarion Ledger: Covering an execution in Mississippi death chamber