Mississippi Supreme Court keeps Anthony Carr death row case closed

The Mississippi Supreme Court has closed another door on Anthony Carr, refusing to reopen the case that has shadowed Quitman County for more than three decades. In a 6-1 order, the justices said Carr’s latest post-conviction petition was barred by state deadlines and by the rule against successive filings, leaving his death sentence in place.

Chief Justice Michael K. Randolph wrote the June 12 decision. Presiding Justice Leslie King dissented, and Presiding Justice James Kitchens did not participate. The court said Carr’s new claim did not fit any exception that would allow another round of review, and it rejected his argument that a 1990 IQ score in his lawyers’ file should have been recorded as 67 instead of 70. The justices also said the evidence Carr relied on had long been in his attorneys’ possession.

Carr was convicted of four counts of capital murder for the killings of Carl Parker, Bobbie Jo Parker, Gregory Parker and Charlotte Parker in the family’s Walnut home in rural Quitman County. The Mississippi Supreme Court first affirmed his conviction and death sentence in 1995, and the U.S. Supreme Court turned away his first appeal the next year.

The legal fight did not end there. In 2004, the state high court allowed Carr to pursue a claim that he was intellectually disabled under Atkins v. Virginia. A trial court rejected that claim in 2013, and the Supreme Court sent it back in 2016 after finding the wrong legal standard had been used. The trial court again denied relief in 2017, and the Supreme Court affirmed in 2019.

The 2016 opinion preserved details that still resonate in Quitman County. It said the Parker children were found with their feet and ankles bound and their wrists tied behind their backs. It also said Charlotte Parker had been shot three times and that there was evidence of sexual battery. The same opinion said Carr and Robert Simons Jr. were arrested the day after the bodies were discovered following the house fire.

The 2026 ruling also reflected a broader change in Mississippi law. In 2024, the court’s Ronk decision eliminated a post-conviction-counsel exception that had once given some inmates another path to challenge earlier filings. That left Carr facing the state’s time bar and successive-writ bar with no opening for a fresh hearing.

For people in Marks, Lambert and the Walnut community, the Parker case remains more than a court file. It is a family tragedy that began after the Parkers left Riverside Baptist Church in Clarksdale on Feb. 2, 1990, and it still stands as one of the county’s most painful memories. The court’s latest refusal does not erase that history, but it does confirm that, in law, the case is closed again.