High court grants stay on execution
The Supreme Court issued an 11th-hour stay for a Mississippi murderer scheduled to be put to death Tuesday night, the third execution the justices have blocked since agreeing to decide whether lethal injections violate the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment.
The reprieve came less than an hour before Earl Wesley Berry was to be put to death for the kidnapping and murder of Mary Bounds in rural Mississippi in 1987.
Death penalty activists and criminal justice experts said the court’s action was further evidence of a de facto moratorium on executions until justices decide the lethal injection issue.
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