A Mississippi man convicted of kidnapping, raping, and killing a 20-year-old community college student in 1993 was executed Wednesday after spending more than 30 years on death row. Charles Crawford, 59, was pronounced dead at 6:15pm following an injection at the Mississippi State Penitentiary in Parchman, the AP reports. He was convicted of abducting Kristy Ray from her parents' home in northern Mississippi's Tippah County on Jan. 29, 1993. According to court records, when Ray's mother came home, her daughter's car was gone and a handwritten ransom note had been left on the table.
On the same day, a different ransom note, made from magazine cutouts and concerning a another woman, was found in the attic of Crawford's former father-in-law. The note was turned over to law enforcement officials, who began searching for Crawford. He was arrested a day later; Crawford said he was returning from a hunting trip at the time. He later told authorities he blacked out and did not recall killing Ray. At the time of that arrest, Crawford was days away from going to trial on a separate assault charge. The trial stemmed from an attack in 1991 in which he was accused of raping a 17-year-old girl and hitting her friend with a hammer. Crawford was found guilty of both charges in two separate trials after saying he had experienced blackouts and did not remember committing either the rape or the hammer attack.
Crawford's prior rape conviction was considered an aggravating circumstance by jurors in his capital murder trial, clearing the way for his death sentence. Over the past three decades, Crawford tried to overturn his death sentence. In an order issued minutes before the execution was scheduled to take place, the US Supreme Court declined without explanation to stop the execution. Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote a dissent that was joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson. Ray's family could not be reached for comment on the execution.
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