Judge mulls arguments in Mississippi death penalty protocol

JACKSON, Miss. — A federal judge will decide whether to block Mississippi from using three drugs when it puts inmates to death, and his ruling could determine whether the state carries out its next execution in about two weeks.

U.S. District Judge Henry Wingate heard several hours of arguments Monday in a lawsuit filed in 2015 on behalf of some Mississippi death row inmates. Wingate noted that one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, Thomas Edwin Loden Jr., is facing a Dec. 14 execution date, which was recently set by the Mississippi Supreme Court.

“The court is going to move expeditiously on this matter,” Wingate said, an indication that he could issue a decision within days.

The mother of the 16-year-old girl killed by Loden watched the court hearing. Wanda Farris of Fulton said she has waited 22 years for justice for her daughter, Leesa Gray.

“She was a sweet Christian girl, loved the Lord, had a lot of life ahead of her,” Farris told reporters outside the courtroom.

Farris’ best friend, Sondra Pearce, was also in court to listen. She said she taught Leesa in kindergarten, and she didn’t like hearing the judge and attorneys discuss whether Loden might feel pain during an execution.

“Let’s talk about Leesa and the inhumane things he put her through,” Pearce said outside the courtroom.

Wingate requested a sworn statement from Mississippi Corrections Commissioner Burl Cain about the state’s current stock of execution drugs.

Gerald Kucia, a Mississippi special assistant attorney general, told Wingate that none of the execution drugs currently in stock are expired. He said some expired execution drugs were recently destroyed by the Mississippi Bureau of Narcotics.

Attorneys for the Roderick & Solange MacArthur Justice Center sued the Mississippi prison system, saying the state’s lethal injection protocol is inhumane.

Jim Craig, a MacArthur Center attorney, said Monday that since 2019, only Alabama, Oklahoma, Mississippi and Tennessee have conducted executions using a three-drug protocol.

According to the Death Penalty Information Center, 27 states have the death penalty. Craig said a majority of death-penalty states and the federal government used a three-drug protocol in 2008, but the federal government and most of those states have since started using one drug.

“Mississippi also has no serious training of their staff before an execution takes place,” Craig said. He said the people who insert needles into a condemned inmate for the…