FILE - In this July 21, 2010, photo, employees leave the front gate of the Mississippi State Penitentiary in Parchman, Miss. An inmate at the Mississippi prison that was a focus of recent deadly unrest was found hanging in his cell by two corrections officers over the weekend and pronounced dead, a coroner said Sunday, Jan. 19, 2020. (AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis, File)
- Charles Ray Crawford was convicted of kidnapping and killing a 20-year-old woman in the early 1990s.
After more than 30 years on death row, Charles Ray Crawford is will be executed in Mississippi on October 15.
The Mississippi Supreme Court set the date Friday after Attorney General Lynn Fitch told the court Crawford had exhausted “all state and federal remedies.” The court denied Crawford’s request of post-conviction release.
Crawford, who will be executed by lethal injection, was convicted of kidnapping and killing 20-year-old Kristy Ray in 1994. He was found guilty of abducting Ray from her parents’ home in Tippah County and killing the young college student.
Crawford claimed he blacked out and did not remember the incident.
He used the same defense in another trial where he was convicted of assaulting a woman with a hammer and raping another woman who was 17 years old at the time.
Mississippi currently has 36 prisoners on death row, per the Department of Corrections website. All but one are male. In comparison, as of June 2025, neighboring states of Alabama and Louisiana had 115 and 56 prisoners, respectively, in their death row population.
The youngest death row inmate in Mississippi is 39 years old and the oldest is 67 years old. The longest serving death inmate in Mississippi has been behind bars for 42 years.
Frank Corder
