Sparing Berry would be cruel, unusual -Hattiesburg (MS) American

Ddrifter had been treated for paranoid schizophrenia.

Opinion:

It has been 20 years since Earl Wesley Berry snuffed out Mary Bounds' life. For 20 years he has been on death row, fighting the state's right to put him to death.

Unless the U.S. Supreme Court steps in and delays it, his execution will be carried out at 6 p.m. today at the state penitentiary at Parchman.

Much of Berry's story has dealt with efforts to save him. The other side of the story - Bounds' family - has received much less notice.

They are the ones who have had to live with the gruesome killing of Bounds by Berry after she left church in Chickasaw County on Nov. 29, 1987. They are the ones who have sat through his trial and listened to his appeals as they wound from the state Supreme Court to federal courts in Greenville and New Orleans.

They are the ones who have had to live without a wife, mother and grandmother.

Here are details of what happened on Nov. 29, 1987:

Berry, described as a 28-year-old "hot tempered" drifter who had been treated for paranoid schizophrenia and spent most of his adult life behind bars, was driving around Houston, Miss., in his grandmother's car when he spotted Bounds going to her car after church. Intending to rape her, he approached her, hit her and dragged her into his grandmother's car and drove out of town.

In his confession to authorities after his arrest, Berry said he took Bounds to the woods and ordered her to lie down, but he didn't rape her. He put her back in the car, drove elsewhere in the woods, dragged her from the car and beat and stomped 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.

That is the picture of Mary Bounds that her husband, Charlie, her daughter, Jena Watson, and her grandchildren have had to live with for the past two decades. Among her grandchildren is Rebecca Blissard, 25, a junior music major at the University of Southern Mississippi who plans to be at Parchman with her mother when the execution is carried out.

"I still remember everything that happened. It's one of my earliest memories," said Blissard, who was 5 when her grandmother was murdered.

Berry's death, she said, will finally bring closure to the long-suffering family.

It is possible that Berry's execution could be delayed by the Supreme Court until it hears a Kentucky case and determines whether lethal injection is cruel and inhumane and thus violates the U.S. Constitution.

That would be a disservice to Bounds and her family who have waited so long for justice to be meted out to Berry. It's almost ironic that a man who beat and stomped to death a woman now hopes the justice system will save him from a death he believes is "cruel and inhumane."