The first of two back-to-back executions will take place today when Mississippi puts to death Paul Everette Woodward, 62, at 6:15 p.m. at the State Penitentiary at Parchman. Tomorrow, the state will execute Gerald James Holland, 72, at the same time.

Woodward, who has been on death row since 1987, received a death sentence in Lee County for the 1986 rape and murder of Rhonda Crane, 24. Holland, on the row since 1993, and Mississippi's oldest death-row prisoner, raped and murdered Krystal King, 15, in Harrison County in 1987.

Both men have petitioned Gov. Haley Barbour for clemency.