|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
| |
By Category |
 |
|
|
| |
|
| |
| |
India On Media |
|
|
|
| |
|
| |
|
|
| Politics
News |
|
| Judges delay death in Mississippi |
| The US Supreme Court has granted a stay of execution to a death-row inmate in Mississippi moments before he was due to die on Tuesday evening
|
| UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
, 31-October-2007
10:22:3 AM |
| Earl Wesley Berry's lawyers requested the execution be stopped until the court rules on whether death by lethal injection is unconstitutional.
Berry murdered Mary Bounds, 57, as she was leaving choir practice in 1987.
His temporary reprieve adds to a series of stays granted since a challenge was mounted in Kentucky in September.
State and lower federal courts have been facing claims from a growing number of death-row inmates that their executions should be put on hold until the Kentucky case is decided early next year.
These courts will probably interpret the Supreme Court ruling as a signal that they should impose an unofficial moratorium on executions until then, say commentators.
Husband's anger
Berry had eaten his last meal and said goodbye to his family but was not yet in the execution chamber when the Supreme Court ruled.
Justices Antonin Scalia and Samuel Alito were the only two judges reported to have opposed the reprieve.
The Supreme Court ruling reverses an earlier finding by an appeals court in New Orleans, which argued Berry - who was sentenced to death in 1988 - had waited too long to challenge the constitutionality of the lethal injection method.
The husband of Berry's victim, Charles Bounds, responded angrily to the stay of execution.
"[He] takes her out there and beats her half to death and she don't die and he beats her head up against a tree until she does," he told corrections commissioner Chris Epps, according to ABC news.
"Now you want to tell me that we got a fair shake here today?"
'Cruel and unusual'
There has been only one execution - in Texas - since the Supreme Court agreed to consider the challenge to the use of the lethal injection lodged by death-row inmates Ralph Baze and Thomas Clyde Bowling Jr in Kentucky on 25 September.
The pair argue that the method constitutes "cruel and unusual" punishment - forbidden by the US Constitution.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
ADVERTISEMENTS
Free offer!!! Become an administrator for your zip home page, "Post" local news (local to your postcode)& pictures, "Post" advertisement banners from local companies. Make Extra money.
|
 |
 |
|
|
| |
|
