JACKSON, Miss.—When Mitzi Magleby checked her post office box on Dec. 15, 2022, she found a letter from Thomas Loden.
“I opened it up and it said, ‘When you read this, I’ll be gone,’” she told the Mississippi Free Press on Oct. 14.
For the last 10 years of her life, Magleby has advocated on behalf of prisoners, including those on death row. The first time she used her voice on behalf of a death row inmate was for Loden.
Loden, a former U.S. Marine, sat on death row for more than 20 years after pleading guilty to charges related to the kidnapping, rape and murder of 16-year-old waitress Leesa Gray in Dorsey, Mississippi, in 2000. Gray’s mother, Wanda Farris, told Mississippi Public Broadcasting in 2022 that her daughter “loved life” and enjoyed singing in her high school’s chorus.
The State executed him by lethal injection at the Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman in Sunflower County on Dec. 14, 2022, the day before Magleby received his letter. She told the Mississippi Free Press that reading the letter after he’d already been executed left her with a crushing sadness.
“It knocked me to my knees. It made me cry so hard that I didn’t think I’d be able to see to drive home. It just really affected me,” she said.
In his letter, Loden referred back to his time as a U.S. Marine, arguing that his military career left him suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.
“Yes, I was a ‘killer’—highly trained to kill, sent to wars to kill, given medals for killing (as I watched friends dying), then … something goes horribly wrong. Now, the country that trained me to kill, sent me to war to kill… is going to kill me, to show, killing is wrong. Rather ironic, isn’t its it?”
She found herself advocating for another death row inmate, Charles Ray Crawford, on Tuesday, Oct. 14.
It was the day before the State executed him for the 1993 kidnapping, rape and murder of 20-year-old college student Kristy Ray in Chalybeate, a small Northeast Mississippi community. Crawford claimed to have blacked out before kidnapping Ray and before killing her, court documents state. He later led investigators to her body in the woods.
The State began his execution at Parchman at 6 p.m. on Wednesday.
Supreme Court Declines To Intervene
At the start of this year, Charles Ray Crawford was one of the then-37 Mississippi prisoners sitting on death row. The State executed Richard Gerald Jordan, the longest-serving death row prisoner, in June.
Sitting on the steps of the Mississippi Supreme Court building on Oct. 14, Mitzi Magleby, who delivered a letter to Gov. Tate Reeves’ office asking him to stop Crawford’s execution, said she believes that Crawford is a changed man today.
“I realize we have people in this world that did horrible things in their youth, but I’m not the person I was 32 years ago. Nobody is the person they were 32 years ago,” she said.
In the letter, Mitzi Magleby and members of the advocacy group Death Penalty Action called Crawford “a model inmate in prison, who is trusted with working in and outside the building where he is housed.” The letter claimed Crawford did not get a fair trial.
For years his lawyers tried unsuccessfully to get him a new trial. One last-minute appeal requesting a stay in his execution made it to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Ultimately, they declined to intervene.
“Charles Ray Crawford will be executed tonight for a crime that his own lawyers told the jury he committed, despite his express instructions not to do so,” Justice Samuel Alito wrote in his opinion on Oct. 15. “Had this case come to this Court on direct appeal, Crawford could have proved that his Sixth Amendment rights were violated under our decision in McCoy v. Louisiana, 584 U. S. 414 (2018), in which we held that lawyers may not override a defendant’s explicit and unequivocal decision not to concede guilt at trial. He would also likely be entitled to a new trial, as a McCoy violation is a structural error that mandates reversal.”
Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented.
Reeves: ‘Justice Must Be Served’
Longtime Mississippi activist Jan Hillegas was the sole person who showed up to join Magleby in Crawford’s defense and to deliver the letter on Tuesday.
“The State is willing to kill and the governor is the person who could prevent it,” she told the Mississippi Free Press. “(They) are not going to do it in my name without me protesting.”
By the time the pair delivered the letter, however, Governor Tate Reeves had already taken to social media to affirm that he would not step in to stop Crawford’s execution.
“This is a solemn responsibility, and it is something that no one takes pleasure in. However, it is a responsibility I accept with the utmost seriousness in keeping with the oath I swore to faithfully carry out the duties of Governor,” Reeves wrote on X. “Mississippi is praying for Ms. Ray and her family. Justice must be served on behalf of victims. In Mississippi, it will be.”
Prison officials pronounced Crawford dead at 6:15p.m. on Oct. 15.
Magleby says that while she is not against incarceration, putting prisoners like Crawford to death does not deter crime or make the state safer.
“Is Mississippi safer because we have the death penalty? I tell you, ‘no, it’s not,” she told the Mississippi Free Press.
‘If He Had Just Let My Daughter Live’
Mary Ray, the mother of Kristy Ray, told the Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal her faith helped keep her going after her daughter’s murder.
Mary and her husband, Tommy Ray, attended numerous court hearings over the years as the man convicted of killing their daughter appealed the ruling, the publication reported.
Still, she told the news outlet, days before Crawford’s execution that it left her with conflicting feelings. “I’ve been through a lot. I don’t think it will upset me like others think it will. If I cry, it will be for my daughter,” she said. “I think it is a waste. A human being is going to die. If he had just let my daughter live, he would have been allowed to live.”