Mississippi Executes Man Who Pleaded Guilty To Raping And Killing Teenage Girl

Mississippi on Wednesday put a man to death after he pleaded guilty to capital murder for raping and strangulating a 16-year-old girl, marking the state's second execution in the last 10 years.

Mississippi Department of Corrections gave a lethal injection to Thomas Edwin Loden Jr., who had been on death row since 2001 after he was convicted of capital murder, rape, and four counts of sexual battery against Leesa Marie Gray. The execution procedures began at 6:00 p.m. at the Mississippi State Penitentiary, and a coroner pronounced him dead at around 6:12 p.m., Associated Press reported.

Loden had filed a lawsuit against the state of Mississippi over its use of three drugs for execution in what seemed like a last-ditch effort to overturn his capital punishment, but a federal judge declined to stall the execution amid the pending lawsuit.

Gray's mother, Wanda Farris, attended Loden's execution at the Penitentiary at Parchman, about 130 miles north of the capital, Jackson.

Wearing a red jumpsuit, Loden was covered with a white sheet and strapped to a gurney by brown leather straps as the execution was about to be carried out. Loden's last words were that he was "deeply remorseful."

"For the past 20 years, I've tried to do a good deed every single day to make up for the life I took from this world," Loden said, according to Courthouse News Service. "If today brings you nothing else, I hope you get peace and closure."

He concluded his last words by saying, "I love you," in Japanese.

Gray's killing took place on June 20, 2000, when she was stranded with a flat tire on a rural road in northeast Mississippi as she was on her way back home from her uncle's restaurant, where she worked as a waitress. Loden, then a Marine Corps recruiter, encountered Gray on the road around 10:45 p.m. and offered help. "Don't worry. I'm a Marine. We do this kind of stuff," he told Gray during the encounter, as per the AP report.

But Loden took issue with Gray saying that she never wanted to become a marine and ordered her into his van, where he spent four hours sexually assaulting her before strangling her to death.

Loden was found the next afternoon on a road with the words "I am sorry" carved to his chest and apparent self-inflicted lacerations on his wrists, court records state.