Good. And just to further highlight why these animals are on Death Row, I'd like to take a moment to talk about the crimes that put them where they are and the victims who suffered.
Victim: Troy Wicker
In 1982, the body of Troy Wicker was found by a Muscle Shoals police officer. Now 25 years later, the man convicted of the crime is set to be executed. The memory of that day left a deep impression on the officer that was first on the scene.
"I came upon the bedroom, noticed a white male still in bed asleep, what I assumed was asleep," said Captain Eddie Lang, of the Muscle Shoals Police Department.
Captain Lang found out that the man was not asleep, but had been murdered, shot once near his right eye. The details of that day are still vivid in his mind. It was the first murder Captain Lang had worked as a police officer.
Lang said, "It changes your life, you take things for granted, we didn't know we thought we were just going to a fight call, we didn't know it was a murder."
Wicker's wife was charged in the murder-for-hire case, along with Tommy Arthur, who was convicted of killing Wicker.
Arthur was convicted three times in the 1982 shooting death of Muscle Shoals businessman Troy Wicker in what is described as a murder-for-hire scheme involving Wicker's wife, Judy.
Arthur has been spared from execution three times, the latest by the U.S. Supreme Court on Jan. 5, 2007.
Victim: Mary Bounds
Berry was convicted and sentenced to death by a Chickasaw County jury for the November 29, 1987 murder of Mary Bounds. The victim was kidnapped and beaten to death after leaving her weekly church choir practice, and her body was found just off a Chickasaw County road near Houston, Mississippi. Berry admitted to the killing, and the confession was used against him at trial. He had admitted that he intended to commit rape but had changed his mind. He also changed his mind after telling her she would be freed and drove her to a second wooded location and used his fists to beat her to death. The victim died as a result of repeated blows to the head.
Berry used his grandmother’s car and later drove to her house, disposed of a pair of mismatched tennis shoes along the way, burned his bloodied clothes, and wiped the vehicle he had used of any blood stains with a towel, which he threw into a nearby pond. Berry’s brother, who was at the house, witnessed some of this suspicious behavior. On December 5, 1987, he called investigators and told them what he had observed. The next day, Berry was arrested at his grandmother’s home and soon confessed to the crime.
Police found the tennis shoes that Berry had discarded and also recovered the bloodied towel from the pond. Berry was indicted for the murder and kidnapping of Mary Bounds, and as a habitual criminal on March 1, 1988.
He was subsequently scheduled to die by lethal injection on October 30, 2007 at the Mississippi State Penitentiary in Parchman.
Berry had stated in 2007 that he has no remorse for the crime.
Though the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals denied Berry's request to stop his execution (citing exceeded time limits to challenge the constitutionality of lethal injection), the U.S. Supreme Court ordered a stay of execution minutes prior to Berry's scheduled execution at the Mississippi State Penitentiary in Parchman. This effectively delays but does not commute Berry's sentence. The order to delay execution is due to a pending Kentucky case before the court regarding the constitutionality of lethal injection.
and Mary's family speaks:
Watson, their only child, says it's been difficult since her mother's death. "Any death is devastating. When it's tragic and sudden I think that it's worse," she said. "When it's a homicide, it's very hard to deal with.
"We will all be at Parchman to support my mother's memory."
The 78-year-old Bounds remembers everything about the day that he learned his wife was missing, and those memories have caused him great guilt for the past 20 years.
"I left home to head to Dallas that week," remembered the retired truck driver. "I remember telling her I loved her before I got on the road. She was on her way to church. When I got back to town four days later my nephew told me I needed to come to the church. I was tired so I was going to take a nap first, and that's when he told me Mary was missing."
Bounds said that when he looked for his wife, all he found were her car, her purse and some blood on the ground. After hours of searching, Mary Bounds' body was found in a wooded area. She had been beaten to death.
"That man took my wife into those woods and beat her head up against a tree until he thought she was dead and I have to live with that," Bounds said with anger in his voice. "He killed my wife while I was in Dallas, Texas, driving a truck. Can you imagine how that made me feel? It makes me feel real small that I wasn't home to protect her, real small."
Even though the execution is scheduled to take place tonight, Watson said the family's grief won't end.
"Even when Berry is dead and gone, my mother will still be dead as well," said Watson. "It will never be over for us, but we won't have to deal with court proceedings and appeals processes and all those things that remind us of him."
Bounds said his wife was the best Christian he has known. That, along with his own faith in God, has helped him to get through the past 20 years.
"It's been hard to be a Christian through all of this, but I learned from the best," said Bounds. "She didn't have a hateful bone in her body. I see men mistreating their wives and I just don't understand why.
"My wife was my life for 35 years and she was taken away from me. I would do anything to have her back."
Victims: Carlton Turner, Sr. and Tonya Turner
On 08/08/98, Irving, Texas, the subject fatally shot his adoptive parents. The victim' co-workers became alarmed when they had not seen or heard from the victims in several days. Irving Police obtained a search warrant for the victim's residence and they discovered both victims in the garage and they were deceased. Both victims died of gunshot wounds. Turner took cash, jewelry, and forged a check on their personal account. Turner was 19 when authorities said he shot Carlton Turner Sr., 43, and Tonya Turner, 40, several times in the head.
He then bought new clothes and jewelry and continued living in the family's Irving home as their bodies decomposed. Prosecutors said Turner had dragged the bodies through the house before dumping them in the garage, then cleaned up the blood and had friends over that weekend for a party.
Neighbors called police after they hadn't seen the couple in several days and saw Turner acting strangely and driving his parents' cars, which they prohibited.
Turner had been a disciplinary problem as a juvenile and at age 14 sexually assaulted an 8-year-old boy. He was arrested at home on warrants for outstanding traffic violations and police found him carrying marijuana. Later that day – three days after the shootings – police returned to the house not far from the Dallas Cowboys headquarters and the foul smell led them to the bodies in the garage.
Turner, who was adopted as an infant, testified at his trial he shot his father in self-defense because his father abused him. He said his mother had locked herself in a bedroom, but he found a key, unlocked the door and shot her as she pushed to keep him out.
"People would never understand," he said from death row. "I felt my mother couldn't live without my father. It didn't make any sense for her to live without him."
