DURANT, Miss. — A Mississippi prosecutor said she hasn’t decided whether to seek the death penalty for a man charged with killing two nuns who dedicated their lives to helping people in one of the poorest counties in the nation.
Relatives and colleagues of Sisters Margaret Held and Paula Merrill have publicly expressed their opposition to execution. A judge denied bond Monday to Rodney Earl Sanders, 46, of Kosciusko, Mississippi, who is charged with two counts of capital murder, one count of burglary and one count of grand larceny.
Capital murder under Mississippi law is a killing committed along with another felony. It is punishable by execution by lethal injection or by life in prison.
Held and Merrill, both 68, were found stabbed to death in their home in Durant after they failed to show up to work at a medical clinic in nearby Lexington, where they were nurse practitioners.
“We are going to consider the heinous nature of the crime and their wishes,” District Attorney Akillie Malone-Oliver said, referring to the death penalty opposition by families of the sisters and their religious orders.
Sanders has been held in an undisclosed jail since his arrest. Accompanied by at least seven law-enforcement officers, he made a brief court appearance Monday before Durant City Judge Jim Arnold, who denied bond and said the state will appoint an attorney after Sanders indicated he could not afford one.
Sanders — who had been living about 15 miles east of the sisters’ Durant home — confessed to the killings but gave no reason, said Holmes County Sheriff Willie March, who was briefed by Durant police and Mississippi Bureau of Investigation officials who took part in Sanders’ interrogation.
