GEORGIA: William Earl Lynd, 53, scheduled to die at 7 p.m. Tuesday. He was convicted of kidnapping and killing his live-in girlfriend, 26-year-old Ginger Moore, and shooting her three times in the face and head nearly 20 years ago.

MISSISSIPPI: Earl Wesley Berry, 49, on May 21, for the 1987 slaying of Mary Bounds. Berry was convicted of kidnapping Bounds from the parking lot of the First Baptist Church in Houston, Miss., and beating her to death.

OKLAHOMA: Terry Lyn Short, 47, on June 17, for throwing a homemade explosive into an Oklahoma City apartment building in 1995, resulting in the death of 22-year-old Ken Yamamoto.

TEXAS: Jose Medellin, 33, on Aug. 5, for his participation in the gang rape and strangulation deaths of two teenage girls 15 years ago in Houston.

http://chronicle.augusta.com/stories/05 ... 7764.shtml


Executions might start again today
By Sandy Hodson | Staff Writer
Tuesday, May 06, 2008
If Earl Lynd's execution goes forward tonight as scheduled, Georgia will be the first state to put anyone to death in nearly eight months.

Five Augusta-area men are among the 106 men and one woman on Georgia's death row. Fifteen, including Mark McClain, who was sentenced in Richmond County Superior Court, are in the final appellate stage.

Mr. McClain is on death row for the November 1994 murder of 20-year-old Kevin Brown during a robbery. The federal appeals court in Atlanta is considering Mr. McClain's federal habeas petition, an appellate step that challenges the legality of his punishment. If it is denied, the only step left is to ask the U.S. Supreme Court to consider his case a final time.

Another man sentenced to death by a Richmond County Superior Court jury, Reinaldo Rivera, has insisted since his October 2000 arrest that he wants to die for his crime. He has changed his mind at least once, however.

Mr. Rivera was sentenced to die for murdering Army Sgt. Marni Glista, 21. He confessed to raping and killing three other women and trying to kill a fifth woman. Because Mr. Rivera refused to sign court documents last summer, he lost his first possible appellate round.

District Attorney Ashley Wright said Monday that Mr. Rivera can still file state and federal habeas petitions. Because he just lost the first round in March, no execution date would be immediately set, she said.

State Attorney General Assistant Russ Willard said Monday that it's too early to speculate how many executions will be set now that the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that Kentucky's use of lethal injections did not violate the constitutional prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. However, at least two other men on Georgia's death row -- Jack Alderman and Curtis Osborne -- have run out of appeals. Mr. Willard said his office asked the Georgia Supreme Court three weeks ago to lift those stays of execution.

At least one other Georgia man, Troy Davis, who was sentenced to death for the murder of an off-duty police officer, has exhausted his appeals.

Richard Dieter, the executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, said Monday that 15 execution dates have been set since the April Supreme Court decision. Probably at least twice as many could be scheduled, but he said he doesn't anticipate a massive rush.

Executions are carried out by real people in what is a very intense situation, Mr. Dieter said. "If you do this every day, people get frazzled."

Before executions were halted, the last person executed in Georgia was John Hightower, on June 27, according to the state Department of Corrections report for 2007. Another death row inmate died of natural causes, and the sentence of a third was commuted to life.

Mr. Lynd, who murdered his girlfriend in 1988, lost a request for commutation from the State Board of Pardons and Paroles on Monday. He will die by lethal injection at 7 p.m. today if the Georgia Supreme Court denies his attorneys' request for permission to appeal his execution.

Reach Sandy Hodson at (706) 823-3226 or sandy.hodson@augustachronicle.com.