Lawyers seek to stop Miss. execution

PARCHMAN, Miss. (AP) - Mississippi has executed a former grocery store butcher for dismembering a man during a 1996 attack in which he also raped the man's female friend.           

Authorities say 49-year-old Gary Carl Simmons Jr. was pronounced dead at 6:16 p.m. CDT Wednesday. He was convicted in the killing of Jeffery Wolfe, who was shot, dismembered and his body parts scattered in a bayou.           

Simmons also was convicted of kidnapping and raping Wolfe's female friend and sentenced to two life terms on those charges. He was the sixth Mississippi inmate executed this year.

Simmons' former brother-in-law, Timothy Milano, also was convicted of killing Wolfe, who drove to Mississippi from Houston with the woman to collect a drug debt. Milano received a life sentence.

 Authorities said Milano shot Wolfe, but Simmons planned the killing.