Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch, a Republican, is seeking an execution date for a convicted murderer who has been on death row for 30 years, but her attorney argues the request is premature as the man plans to appeal to the Supreme Court of the United States.
Charles Ray Crawford, 58, was sentenced to death in connection with the 1993 kidnapping and murder of Kristy Ray, a 20-year-old community college student, according to The Associated Press.
During his 1994 trial, jurors noted a past rape conviction as an aggravating circumstance when sentencing Crawford, but his attorneys said Monday they are appealing that conviction to the Supreme Court after a lower court ruled against him. last week.
Crawford was arrested the day after Ray was kidnapped from her parents' home and stabbed to death in Tippah County. Crawford told officers he had passed out and did not remember killing her.
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Charles Ray Crawford, Mississippi death row inmate, convicted and sentenced to death in 1994 for the 1993 kidnapping and murder of a 20-year-old community college student, Kristy Ray. (Mississippi Department of Corrections via AP)
He was arrested just days before his scheduled trial, accused of assaulting another woman by hitting her in the head with a hammer.
The trial on the assault charge was delayed for several months before he was found guilty. In a separate trial, Crawford was convicted of raping a 17-year-old girl who was a friend of the hammer attack victim. The victims were in the same location during the attacks.
Crawford said he also passed out during those incidents and did not remember committing the hammer assault or the rape.
During the sentencing portion of Crawford's capital murder trial for Ray's death, jurors found the rape conviction an “aggravating circumstance” and imposed the death penalty, according to court records.
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During the sentencing portion of Crawford's capital murder trial, jurors deemed his prior rape conviction an “aggravating circumstance” and imposed the death penalty. (iStock)
In his latest federal appeal of the rape case, Crawford claimed that his previous attorneys provided unconstitutionally ineffective assistance with an insanity defense. He received a mental evaluation at the state hospital, but the trial judge repeatedly refused to allow a psychiatrist or other mental health professional outside of the state's expert to assist in Crawford's defense, court records show.
On Friday, a majority of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit rejected Crawford's appeal.
But the dissenting judges wrote that he received a “poorly prepared and presented insanity defense” and that “it took years for a qualified doctor to conduct a full evaluation of Crawford.” The dissenting justices cited Dr. Siddhartha Nadkarni, a neurologist who examined Crawford.
“Charles suffered from such a defect of reason due to his seizure disorder that he did not understand the nature and quality of his actions at the time of the crime,” Nadkarni wrote. “He is a man with a severe brain injury (corroborated by both history and his neurological examination) who was essentially not usefully present due to epileptic seizures at the time of the crime.”
The photo shows the stretcher of an execution chamber. (AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki, File)
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Crawford's case has already been appealed several times using various arguments, which is common in death penalty cases.
Hours after the federal appeals court denied Crawford's latest appeal, Fitch filed papers urging the state Supreme Court to set a date for Crawford's execution by lethal injection, saying it “has exhausted all state and federal remedies.” .
However, attorneys representing Crawford at the Mississippi Office of Post-Conviction Counsel filed papers Monday saying they plan to ask the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn the appeals court ruling.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
