Mississippi executes a man convicted of raping and killing a college student

PARCHMAN, Miss. (AP) — A Mississippi man convicted of kidnapping, raping and killing a 20-year-old community college student in 1993 was executed Wednesday.

Charles Crawford, 59, was pronounced dead at 6:15 p.m. following a lethal injection at the Mississippi State Penitentiary in Parchman.

Crawford had spent more than 30 years on death row. His execution comes several months after the execution of Mississippi’s longest-serving death row inmate in a year of increasing executions nationwide.

Crawford was convicted of abducting Kristy Ray from her parents’ home in northern Mississippi’s Tippah County on Jan. 29, 1993. According to court records, when Ray’s mother came home, her daughter’s car was gone and a handwritten ransom note had been left on the table.

On the same day, a different