JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — Mississippi's longest-serving death row inmate is set to be executed on June 25, the state Supreme Court ruled Thursday.
Richard Gerald Jordan, 78, who was sentenced to death in 1976 for kidnapping and killing a woman, has filed multiple death sentence appeals, the most recent of which was denied in October.
The Mississippi ruling comes on the same day Army Combat veteran Jeffrey Hutchinson was scheduled to be executed in Florida. Before Thursday, 14 people had been executed in the U.S., including three in Florida.
The order did not specify the manner in which Jordan will be executed. Mississippi law allows death sentences to be carried out using lethal injection, nitrogen gas, electrocution or firing squad.
According to Mississippi Supreme Court records, Jordan kidnapped Edwina Marter in January 1976 and shot her to death in a forest in Harrison County. He then called her husband, Charles Marter, falsely claimed she was safe and asked for $25,000.
Records show that before the killing Jordan had traveled from Louisiana to Gulfport, Mississippi and called the Gulf National Bank, where Charles Marter worked as a loan officer. After he was told Marter could speak with him, he hung up, looked up the Marters' home address and went to the house posing as an electric company employee.
“After due consideration, the Court finds Jordan has exhausted all state and federal remedies for purposes of setting an execution,” the ruling read.
Mississippi's last execution was in December 2022.
FILE - This undated photo provided by the Mississippi Department of Corrections shows death row inmate Richard Gerald Jordan. (Mississippi Department of Corrections via AP, File)
NEW YORK (AP) — More drops for AI stocks dragged the U.S. market lower Wednesday, and Wall Street sank to its fourth straight loss.
The S&P 500 fell 1.2% for its worst day in nearly a month, though it’s still not far from its all-time high set last week. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dipped 228 points, or 0.5%, and the Nasdaq composite dropped 1.8%.
Slightly more stocks rose within the S&P 500 than fell, but they got drowned out by the drops for companies in the artificial-intelligence industry.
Questions continue to dog the former superstars about whether their yearslong dominance of Wall Street meant their prices shot too high, as well as whether all the investment in AI will produce enough profit and productivity to prove worth the cost. Worries are also rising about the debt that some companies are taking on to pay for it all.
Broadcom dropped 4.5%, Oracle fell 5.4% and CoreWeave sank 7.1%. Nvidia, the chip company that’s become Wall Street’s most influential stock because of its tremendous size, fell 3.8% and was the day's heaviest weight on the S&P 500.
Power companies that jumped earlier in the year on expectations for stronger demand from electricity-sucking data centers also lost some of their shine. Constellation Energy fell 6.7%.
Only 17% of respondents in a survey of relatively big businesses by UBS said they’re in production at scale with their AI projects. That could be “a reminder for tech investors to remain sober about the likely 2026 revenue growth uplift from AI products,” according to UBS analysts, though the rate continues to rise.
Also on the losing end of Wall Street was Lennar, which sank 4.5% following a mixed profit report. The homebuilder delivered a weaker profit for the latest quarter than analysts expected, though its revenue topped expectations.
Executive Chairman Stuart Miller said that conditions remain challenging, with customers feeling less confident while looking for discounts and more affordable options. As a result, the company gave limited forecasts for its upcoming financial performance.
Progressive, meanwhile, fell 2% after the insurer based in Mayfield Village, Ohio, said that its net income for November fell 5% from its year-ago level.
On the winning side of Wall Street were oil companies, after President Donald Trump ordered a blockade of all “sanctioned oil tankers” into Venezuela. It’s Trump’s latest escalation against Venezuela, which may be sitting on more oil than any other country.
That sent the price of a barrel of benchmark U.S. crude higher by 1.2% to $55.94. just a day after it sank to its lowest level since 2021. Brent crude, the international standard, climbed 1.3% to $59.68 per barrel.
That in turn helped ConocoPhillips rise 4.6% and cut into its loss for the year so far, which came into the day at 8.5%. Devon Energy rallied 5.3%, and Exxon Mobil climbed 2.4%.
Oil prices had dropped through most of this year on expectations that companies are pumping more than enough crude to meet the world’s demand.
Netflix added 0.2% after Warner Bros. Discovery’s board said it still recommends shareholders approve a buyout offer from the streaming giant for its Warner Bros. business, rather than a competing hostile bid from Paramount Skydance for the entire company.
Warner Bros. Discovery fell 2.4%, while Paramount Skydance dropped 5.4%.
All told, the S&P 500 fell 78.83 points to 6,721.43. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dipped 228.29 to 47,885.97, and the Nasdaq composite dropped 418.14 to 22,693.32.
In the bond market, Treasury yields held relatively steady ahead of a report coming on Thursday that will show how bad inflation has been for U.S. consumers.
The yield on the 10-year Treasury held at 4.15%, where it was late Tuesday.
In stock markets abroad, indexes were mixed in Europe following a stronger finish in Asia.
South Korea’s Kospi leaped 1.4% for one of the world’s bigger gains and shaved its loss for the week so far down to 2.7%.
AP Business Writer Elaine Kurtenbach contributed.
Dilip Patel, right, and Bobby Charmak, left, work on the floor at the New York Stock Exchange in New York, Wednesday, Dec. 10, 2025. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
Traders work on the floor at the New York Stock Exchange in New York, Wednesday, Dec. 10, 2025. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
Currency traders work near a screen showing the Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI), left, at the foreign exchange dealing room of the Hana Bank headquarters, in Seoul, South Korea, Wednesday, Dec. 17, 2025. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)
A currency trader watches monitors near a screen showing the Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI) at the foreign exchange dealing room of the Hana Bank headquarters, in Seoul, South Korea, Wednesday, Dec. 17, 2025. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)
A currency trader stands near a screen showing the Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI), top left, and the foreign exchange rate between U.S. dollar and South Korean won at the foreign exchange dealing room of the Hana Bank headquarters, in Seoul, South Korea, Wednesday, Dec. 17, 2025. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)
