A former Marine convicted of rape and murder has been executed in the United States: his victim was found with the words I'm sorry engraved on his chest…
Eva Deschamps / December 15, 2022
A former U.S. Marine who confessed to raping and killing a 16-year-old girl in 2000 was executed Wednesday in Mississippi.
Thomas Edwin Loden, 58, was given a lethal injection at 18:00 at Parchman Penitentiary, an overcrowded prison in this conservative southern state. Mr. Loden had pleaded guilty to the kidnapping of Leesa Gray in 2000, who had been stranded on a country road after her car suffered a flat tire.
Ex-Marine and recruiter for this army corps, he had confessed to have raped her several times in his van before choking her and then strangling her.
Loden was found the next day on the side of a road with the words "I'm sorry" carved on his chest, according to court documents. He was sentenced to death in 2001.
His killing Wednesday is the first in Mississippi this year and the second since 2013, as the state has recently struggled to procure the lethal substances needed for executions.
He becomes the 18th inmate executed in the United States in 2022.
The death penalty is legal in nearly half of the 50 U.S. states, but had previously been used in only five states this year: Alabama, Arizona, Missouri, Oklahoma and Texas.