Categories: Mississippi News

Mississippi seeks execution date for man sentenced in 1993 killing

JACKSON, Miss. (WJTV) – The Mississippi Supreme Court received a renewed motion from Attorney General Lynn Fitch (R-Miss.), seeking an execution date for a man on death row.

On June 2, the U.S. Supreme Court denied Charles Ray Crawford’s petition for certiorari review.

Crawford was sentenced to death in the 1993 kidnapping and killing of a community college student, 20-year-old Kristy Ray. Jurors in his 1994 trial cited a past rape conviction as an aggravating circumstance when they sentenced Crawford.

Crawford was arrested the day after Ray was abducted from her parents’ home and stabbed to death in northern Mississippi’s Tippah County. Crawford told officers he had blacked out and did not recall killing her.

This August 3, 2017, photo provided by the Mississippi Department of Corrections shows Mississippi death row inmate Charles Ray Crawford, who was convicted and sentenced to death in 1994 in the 1993 kidnapping and killing of community college student, 20-year-old Kristy Ray. (Mississippi Department of Corrections via AP)

At the time of that arrest, Crawford was days away from his scheduled trial on a charge of assaulting another woman by hitting her over the head with a hammer.

The assault trial was delayed several months, and he was convicted. In a separate trial, Crawford was convicted in the rape of a 17-year-old girl who was friends with the victim of the hammer assault. The two victims were at the same place during the attacks. Crawford said he also experienced blackouts and did not recall committing the rape or the hammer assault.

During the sentencing portion of Crawford’s capital murder trial, jurors found the rape conviction was an “aggravating circumstance” and they sentenced him to death, court records show.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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