Mysqli prepared statement error

[bsteinex]

I'm trying to use mysqli with Apache 2.0.63, Mysql 5.1.32, and Php 5.2.9-1 for Windows. Looking at phpinfo() I can see mysqli installed. I can also run a mysql query. However when I attempt to run a prepared statment I it fails at the if statement if($stmt->prepare($sql)) with the following message:

Could not run SQL statement: SELECT * FROM logins WHERE username = ? AND pwd = ?

Does anyone have any idea what I'm doing wrong?

$conn = new mysqli('127.0.0.1', 'user', 'password', 'the_db') or die ('Cannot open database');
    $sql = 'SELECT * FROM logins WHERE username = ? AND pwd = ?';
    $stmt = $conn->stmt_init();
    if ($stmt->prepare($sql)){
    	//bind the query params
    	$stmt->bind_param('ss', $username, $password);
    	//execute the queryprepare
    	$stmt->execute();
    }else{
    	die("Could not run SQL statement: $sql");
    }