JACKSON, Miss. (WJTV) – Lawyers who are representing a Mississippi death row inmate filed an Emergency Application for Stay of Execution.

Officials said the lawyers for Charles Ray Crawford also filed a certiorari petition before the United States Supreme Court on October 1, 2025.

In September 2025, the Mississippi Supreme Court set October 15, 2025, as the execution date for Crawford. The court denied his post-conviction appeal.

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.

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.