The 1st execution this year is set for Tuesday, and on successive Tuesdays for the next 2 weeks 2 more inmates are scheduled to die by lethal injection.
And the 3 may not be the only death row inmates executed this year.
"There could be more this year, but no way to tell how many more," said Jan Schaefer, spokeswoman for the state attorney general's office. On Thursday, the Mississippi Supreme Court set Robert Simon Jr.'s execution for May 24.
The court had previously set a May 10 execution date for Benny Joe Stevens and a May 17 execution date for Rodney Gray.
In May last year, the state had its 1st back-to-back executions when Gerald Holland and Paul Woodward were put to death. Also, the state executed Joseph Daniel Burns in July.
The state Supreme Court set the stage for the 3rd execution this month when it ruled against Simon in a motion from his attorney alleging that Simon is incompetent for execution after he hit his head in prison.
Simon's attorney, T.H. Freeland IV of Oxford, had filed the motion April 1 in response to Attorney General Jim Hood's request for an April 20 execution date.
The court on Thursday said there was no sufficient evidence showing Simon has a mental condition.
Freeland couldn't be reached Friday. He didn't describe how Simon hit his head, but said in court papers Simon can't understand his case and has trouble carrying on conversations.
Freeland wanted the state Supreme Court to send the case back to a Quitman County judge for a hearing on Simon's competency.
Simon, 47, was sentenced to death for the killings of Carl Parker, his wife, Bobbie Jo, and their son, Gregory, on Feb. 2, 1990.
He was sentenced to life in prison for the killing of Charlotte Parker, the slain couple's 9-year-old daughter.
The killings occurred a few hours after the family had returned to their rural Quitman County home from church services.
Starting with Simon, the death row inmates will be executed with a new lethal injection cocktail.
Mississippi Department of Corrections Commissioner Chris Epps said MDOC will use the drug pentobarbital in its 3-drug lethal injection instead of sodium thiopental, the commonly used drug in prior executions across the country.
A nationwide shortage of sodium thiopental has prompted some states to look for an alternative.
Gray, Stevens and Simon through their civil attorney had challenged in court that MDOC failed to properly publicize the change in regulations to switch to a new drug as required by the Administrative Procedures Act.
Last month, Hinds County Circuit Judge Bill Gowan rejected the challenge. And Thursday, the state Supreme Court refused to consider an appeal of Gowan's ruling.
"I don't think at this moment there is anything else we can do," said Jackson lawyer David Neil McCarty, who represents the inmates on that issue.
"It's frustrating because we think we can win on this issue, but it will only happen after the executions," he said.
Stevens, now 52, was sentenced to death in 1999 for killing four people in Marion County's Foxworth community.
Killed were Glenda Lee Reid, 38, Stevens' former wife; Wesley Lee Reid, 38, her husband; Dylan Reid, her 11-year-old son; and Heath Pounds, 10, a neighbor's son who apparently was spending the night with Dylan.
Gray, now 38, was sentenced to death in 1996 for the 1994 rape and murder of Grace Blackwell of Louin, 79.
Blackwell was found shot multiple times in Newton County. She last had been seen withdrawing a large amount of money from her bank.
Source: Jackson Clarion Ledger, May 7, 2011
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