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Thread: Benjamin Berry - Louisiana Execution - June 7, 1987

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    Benjamin Berry - Louisiana Execution - June 7, 1987


    Deputy Sheriff
    Robert Cochran



    Summary of Offense: Convicted in 1978 of killing Robert Cochran, a bank guard, in a bank robbery in Metairie on January 30, 1978.

    Victim: Robert Cochran

    Time of Death: Shortly after midnight

    Manner of execution: Electric Chair

    Last Meal:

    Final Statement:

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    June 8, 1987

    MURDERER EXECUTED IN LOUISIANA

    ANGOLA, La. — A high school dropout condemned for murdering a guard in a bank robbery was put to death early today in the Louisiana electric chair.

    Benjamin Berry, 31 years old, was executed shortly after midnight, said C. Paul Phelps, secretary of the State Department of Corrections in Baton Rouge. He was the 76th prisoner executed in the United States and the eighth in Louisiana since the United States Supreme Court allowed states to restore the death penalty in 1976.

    Mr. Berry's appeals ran out late Friday when the Supreme Court refused to stop the execution and Gov. Edwin W. Edwards said he would not step in.

    Apparently, Mr. Berry had already accepted that his sentence would not be stayed. On Thursday, he asked the warden at the state prison in Angola to move him off death row to the isolation cell down the hall from the electric chair so he could be alone.

    Mr. Berry was convicted in 1978 of killing Robert Cochran, a bank guard, in a bank robbery in Metairie on Jan. 30, 1978. This was his eight execution date; the others had been canceled by appeals.

    He spent Saturday visiting members of his family, the prison warden, Hilton Butler, said.

    About 30 people held a candlelight vigil in front of the Governor's Mansion in Baton Rouge to protest the execution. Roughly a dozen people gathered for a similar protest in New Orleans.

    Several death penalty supporters gathered outside the prison's front gate. They wore shirts lettered with the message ''Justice for All - Even the Victims.''

    The execution was the first of five scheduled in Louisiana in the next two weeks and the first in the state since Jan. 4, 1985.

    http://www.nytimes.com/1987/06/08/us...xecuted&st=nyt

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