Less than two weeks from the scheduled execution of Richard Jordan, the Mississippi Supreme Court said it will not reconsider the death row inmate’s appeal, but the federal high court is expected to discuss his case next week. 

Jordan, at 79 the state’s oldest and longest serving death row inmate, was first convicted in 1976 for kidnapping and killing Edwina Marter in Harrison County. He had four trials until a death sentence stuck in 1998. 

On Thursday, eight of the nine justices of the Mississippi Supreme Court declined to rehear an order to set Jordan’s execution date. Justice Leslie King was the lone person who wanted to grant a rehearing. 

This decision comes about a week after Jordan’s attorney, Krissy Nobile of the Office of Capital Post-Conviction Counsel, wrote to the court to emphasize that her client has not yet exhausted federal remedies and an execution could not be set. 

The U.S. Supreme Court distributed Jordan’s petition for a writ of certiorari at a May 29 conference and is expected to discuss it again at a June 18 conference – a week before the execution. 

Meanwhile, Jordan’s attorneys filed an emergency application for a stay of execution with Justice Samuel Alito Jr. pending the court’s disposition on the case. 

They argue there is a reasonable prospect that the court will grant certiorari and reverse the Mississippi Supreme Court’s decision, and that Jordan will suffer irreparable harm if a stay is not ordered. 

In its response, the state argues Jordan has been trying to avoid his death sentence for almost 50 years and that he is repeating baseless arguments in his pending petition for certiorari. 

His attorneys argue Jordan’s death sentence is not valid because in 1976, when the murder was committed and Jordan was sentenced, Mississippi and all other states had ceased executions based on a 1972 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Furman v. Georgia that capital punishment was unconstitutional.