JACKSON - Time could be running out for Earl Wesley Berry, a death row inmate scheduled to die for kidnapping a woman outside a church in 1987 and beating her to death before dumping her body in the woods.
Barring a reprieve from the U.S. Supreme Court, Berry will die by lethal injection Tuesday at 6 p.m. He was sentenced to death for the murder of Mary Bounds, a brutal crime nearly two decades ago.
Berry, 48, has spent almost 20 years in a 6-by-9-foot cell on death row at the Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman, a sprawling prison situated among the cotton and soybean fields in the Mississippi Delta.
Over the years, Berry has appealed his case on a variety of legal arguments, ranging from the alleged failures of his lawyers to his own low IQ.
His latest appeals - one from state court and one in the federal system - challenge the constitutionality of lethal injections. Berry claims the mixture of deadly chemicals will cause pain and therefore constitute cruel and unusual punishment.
Berry wants the courts to delay his execution at least until the U.S. Supreme Court reviews challenges to lethal injections raised by inmates in Kentucky. The Supreme Court is expected to hear the case early next year.
Several states have halted executions until the Supreme Court makes a decision. Mississippi is not one of them.
Berry was sentenced to death by a Chickasaw County jury on Oct. 28, 1988. His confession was used against him during the trial.
"Any death is devastating. When it's tragic and sudden I think that it's worse," said Jena Watson, Bounds' only child. "When it's a homicide, it's very hard to deal with."
The following is what happened on a cold Sunday night in November 1987, according to court records and Associated Press interviews with an investigator and Bounds' daughter. Berry's attorneys declined comment. His family did not respond to telephone messages left by the AP.
Berry was a 28-year-old "hot tempered" drifter in 1987 who had been treated for paranoid schizophrenia and spent most of his adult life behind bars.
He sometimes worked odd jobs in the cattle business, but on Nov. 29, 1987, he was likely under the influence of alcohol or drugs and driving his grandmother's car around the tiny north Mississippi town of Houston. That's when he saw Bounds, a 54-year-old manufacturing plant supervisor, standing outside the First Baptist Church.
Bounds was planning to attend the weekly choir practice that night, but Berry forced her into his car and drove to a secluded area on the outskirts of town.
He told her to lay on the ground with the intentions of raping her, but for some reason changed his mind. He put her back in the car - promising to return to town - and drove down a dark gravel road into the woods where he beat her to death.
"The way he did her, it's not human. He stomped her. They found a tennis shoe mark on her face," said Chickasaw County Sheriff's Investigator John A. Porter.
After carrying Bound's body deeper into the woods, Berry returned to his grandmother's house, disposing of a mismatched pair of bloody shoes along the way. He burned his bloodstained clothes and wiped the vehicle down with a towel, which he threw into a nearby pond.
Berry's odd behavior in trying to conceal the crime aroused his brother's suspicion and he called police on Dec. 5, 1987, just after the body was found thanks to a man who spotted Bounds' black high heel shoes on the side of the road.
Berry was arrested the next day and confessed. Investigators later found his bloody shoes and the towel used to clean the car.
Since then, Watson has tried hard to make sure her children remember how much their grandmother loved them. She hasn't decided whether she'll watch the execution.
"We will all be at Parchman to support my mother's memory," she said. When asked if she believes Berry deserves to die for the crimes he committed, she hesitated: "I have no comment on that."
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