'De Facto Moratorium' on Lethal Injections?

Oct. 30, 2007— -- Earl Wesley Berry is a killer. He murdered Mary Bounds 20 years ago after the Mississippi grandmother left her church choir practice.

Bounds' daughter Jena Watson expected to see Berry die Wednesday evening by lethal injection.

"It has brought back all of the grief," she said.

But the Supreme Court gave Berry a last-minute reprieve that could have an affect on other death row inmates across the country.

The Court blocked the execution until it decides a separate, pending case next year on whether death by lethal injection is so cruel and unusual it violates the Constitution.

"Right now I think we have a de facto moratorium on lethal injections in this country," said Richard Dieter, executive director of the anti-capital punishment Death Penalty Information Center.

The Court's order will bring capital punishment across the United States to a sudden stop. It's the third time in a month the Justices have blocked an execution.

But the eleventh-hour decision to spare Berry, at least temporarily, angered some victims' rights groups.

"This means further delay in an execution that is already very long overdue," said Kent Scheidegger, legal director for the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation.

"This is a man who beat a woman to death 20 years ago. And we shouldn't be concerned that much about a very remote chance that he might feel some pain in being punished for that crime," he continued.

The justices plan to decide a Kentucky case next year on whether lethal injections are unconstitutional. But 35 other states also use the method. Eighteen have executions on hold until the Court rules. Others, like Mississippi, tried to go forward.

The states, as well as the federal government, began implementing lethal injections as a more humane alternative to a firing squad or the electric chair. Three drugs are used: one induces sleep, one causes paralysis and the final drug stops the heart.

But the process isn't always as so simple.