A federal judge has allowed the execution of Earl Wesley Berry to go forward in a ruling issued Friday.
Federal Judge Allen Pepper Jr. in Greenville denied Berry's request to halt his execution, which is scheduled for 6 p.m. Wednesday at the Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman. The court affirmed an earlier ruling that Berry waited to long to appeal his sentence on the grounds that lethal injection in Mississippi is a cruel and unusual punishment.
Berry was sentenced to death for the 1987 beating death of Mary Bounds. He confessed to abducting Bounds as she left church choir practice, killing her and dumping her body on a rural road in north Mississippi.
Also on Friday, a Berry attorney asked the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals to stop the execution on grounds Berry is mentally retarded and cannot be executed.