PARCHMAN – For the first time in 50 years, Mississippi has scheduled back to back executions of two Death Row inmates. Paul Everette Woodward was pronounced dead by lethal injection last night at 6:39 p.m. at Parchman, and tonight, unless prison officials hear from Mississippi’s governor, convicted murderer Gerald Holland will also be put to death.
The days leading up to Woodward and Holland’s execution were filled with emotion for the family of the victims, and frustration, as the attorney general’s office sought to have Woodward, Holland and possibly a third inmate, Joseph Daniel Burns, put to death at the state penitentiary in Parchman.
Mississippi’s attorney general Jim Hood, had asked for the court’s approval in April to execute the three men because one of the inmates missed a deadline to file a petition asking the U.S. Supreme Court to review his case, and the highest court had already refused to consider any further petitions from the other two Death Row inmates.
Woodward, 62, who was put to death last night, had been on Death Row since 1987, when he was found guilty of the rape and murder of 25-year old Rhonda Holloman Crane, a youth court volunteer.
Printed reports said Crane had been traveling on U.S. Highway 29 in Perry County, going to meet her family for a camping trip. Reports said Woodward, who was working as a logger at the time, used his truck to stop Crane and then forced her into his truck at gunpoint. Woodward drove Crane to a remote area where he raped her and shot her in the back of the head.
The Clarion Ledger said that Woodward later confessed to the crime and told his attorneys that he had “conversations with the devil.”
Holland was convicted in 1986 for the murder of 15-year-old Krystal Dee King in Gulfport, and at 72, Holland is the oldest inmate on Death Row.
Joseph Burns, 42, who may also be executed this month, was sentenced to death in 1994 for the murder of Floyd Melvin McBride.
Burns stabbed McBride during a robbery at the Town House Motel in Tupelo. Authorities said Burns worked with another man to rob the hotel’s safe and fled the scene with the money.
No date of execution has been set for him.
Mississippi’s last Death Row execution was Dale Leo Bishop in 2008.
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