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 T

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