"Who Really Pays?" — The Song I Wrote on the Day of a Mississippi Execution
On June 25, 2025, Mississippi executed Richard Gerald Jordan by lethal injection after nearly 50 years on death row. I wrote a song that same day—not to defend him, but to tell the part of the story that rarely gets heard, and partly to help my own soul reconcile everything I am trying to process in regards to life and death, crime and punishment.
My name is Andy Tallent. I’m a songwriter, composer, and the founder of Second Verses—a nonprofit that uses music and songwriting as a path toward healing and restoration for incarcerated individuals. We work in prisons across the South, including death row. And in the final year of Richard Gerald Jordan’s life, I had the opportunity to sit with him on multiple occasions, talk with him, and hear his story—not the crime, but the man he had become.
Richard had been on Mississippi’s death row since 1976, convicted of the murder of Edwina Marta. It was an absolutely horrific crime. A woman’s life was stolen, and a family lives with that pain every single day. Nothing can undo that loss, and this post isn’t here to suggest otherwise.
But in the decades that followed, Richard changed. He found faith. He wrote songs—one in particular about Jesus that still echoes in my mind.
It began with the line: "Jesus was one of us."
It told the story of a Savior - his Savior - who walked the dirt with us, who was fully human and fully divine.
“I know where I’ll be when they put that needle in my arm.”
That’s what Richard said to me the last time I saw him. He turned, looked me directly in the eye, and said those words with peace on his face. Then he smiled, gently patted my shoulder, and walked away. That moment has stayed with me. I believe in the power of music and how songwriting can help your soul speak the words that you just can’t say otherwise. This is one of those occasions for me.
I got involved volunteering in a prison where death sentences were not part of the population, so the reality of what these men on death row are living with day in and day out was a new experience for me. Sure, I’ve worked with men sentenced to life without parole, but nothing like all of the complexities of a death sentence, and the reality that eventually the sentence will be carried out.
This is where I found myself as Richard’s execution date drew near.
I sat at a piano and wrote “Who Really Pays”—a song about the cost of crime, specifically murder resulting in capital punishment, and how that cost ripples far beyond the courtroom. I have sat and talked with a warden who oversaw his first execution and listened to the emotion that his voice allowed to escape and how the weight of executing someone still lingers. I have listened to a chaplain tell me his stories of ministering to families - victim and inmate - and how the execution didn’t resolve anything because the pain of the loss remains for the victims, and the inmate family now carries the image of watching their person die right in front of them. These soul scars don’t wash away as you pull out of the parking lot of the prison. They are embedded for life. They might lay low for a while, but they are still lingering and they will make appearances and bring with them the memory of the trauma for you to face yet again.
This song is not for or against capital punishment. It’s about the complexity of it all.
Before Second Verses, I had strong opinions about the justice system, about the death penalty, about right and wrong. But when you sit in a room with someone who has lived nearly five decades in a 6x9 cell, who has lost everything, who has faced what they’ve done—and who’s found peace in Christ—it challenges everything.
I still believe punishment matters.
I still believe in accountability.
But I’ve also come to see that people are not always the same person they were when they committed the crime.
I am around murderers every week, and I have not once felt threatened or fearful for my life. Why? Because people change. Don’t read something I am not saying: crime does deserve punishment and choices people make do have very real consequences.
Justice is necessary. But it’s not always clean.
Richard asked for mercy. He explained his past. He sought understanding for the trauma and PTSD he said led to that fateful day—but he also owned the weight of what he did. He wasn’t perfect. But he wasn’t who he used to be.
As someone who has walked alongside the incarcerated, I’ve seen what real reform and rehabilitation can look like. Through music, I’ve seen men and women reconnect to the parts of themselves that prison tried to erase—and that crime once buried.
“Who Really Pays” is not a protest song. It’s a human song. A song that asks:
When a person is executed, who carries the grief?
Who walks them to the end?
Who still weeps for the victim?
And what happens when someone who did unimaginable harm… becomes someone else?
If this story moved you, share it.
Share it for the victim.
Share it for the truth-tellers.
Share it for those who are willing to ask the hardest question of all:
Who really pays?
About Second Verses
Second Verses is a nonprofit organization dedicated to using songwriting and music as a tool for emotional processing, mental health support, and personal transformation for incarcerated individuals. We believe every story deserves a second verse—because the first chapter doesn’t have to be the last.