Court stays U.S. execution

Press, 8 July 1983, Page 6

Court stays U.S. execution

NZPA New Orleans A Federal Appeals Court sitting in Mississippi yesterday blocked the execution of a convicted child-killer, Jimmy Lee Gray, despite a United States Supreme Court decision earlier in the day establishing guidelines for last-ditch appeals by death row prisoners. Gray had been condemned to die in the Missis-

sippi gas chamber last evening for the rape and murder in 1976 of a girl, aged five, who was suffocated in a mud puddle. “Our execution date is down the drain,” said the state’s Assistant AttorneyGeneral, Mr William Boyd, in New Orleans. The sth United States Cir-

cuit Court of Appeals had stayed the execution, waiting for the Supreme Court to rule in the case of a Texas death row inmate, Thomas Barefoot. But several hours after the Supreme Court’s ruling was announced, a threejudge panel of the Appeals Court in New Orleans blocked the execution and called for more hearings in

Gray’s case. The panel said that it needed more time to study the issues in the case. In Washington, the Supreme Court, in a decision likely to shorten the life expectancy of some 1200 condemned murderers across the nation, made it easier yesterday for lower courts to expedite their handling of appeals from death row.