A former US Marine, who confessed to raping and killing a 16-year-old girl in 2000, was executed on Wednesday December 14 in the state of Mississippi.
Thomas Edwin Loden, 58, received a lethal injection at 6 p.m. (0000 GMT) at Parchman Penitentiary, an overcrowded prison in this conservative state in the southern United States.
Thomas Loden had pleaded guilty to the kidnapping of Leesa Gray in 2000, who found herself isolated on a country road, her car having suffered a flat tire.
Ex-Marine and recruiter for this army corps, he had confessed to having raped her several times in his van before suffocating and then strangling her.
Loden had been discovered the next day on the side of a road with the words
"I'm sorry"
carved into his chest, according to court documents.
He was sentenced to death in 2001.
The 18th inmate executed in the United States in 2022
His killing on Wednesday is the first in Mississippi this year and the second since 2013, as the state recently struggled to secure the lethal substances needed for executions.
He becomes the 18th inmate to be executed in the United States in 2022. The death penalty is legal in nearly half of the 50 U.S. states but had so far only been carried out in five states this year: Alabama, Arizona, Missouri, Oklahoma and Texas.
