(Atmore) Alabama executed a man early Friday for the murder of a woman beaten to death in 2001. The state resumed lethal injections after failed executions prompted the governor to order an internal review of proceedings.
James Barber, 64, was pronounced dead at 1:56 a.m. local time after receiving a lethal injection at a southern Alabama prison.
“Justice has been served. This morning, James Barber was put to death for the terrible crime he committed over twenty years ago: the most heinous, atrocious and cruel murder of Dorothy Epps,” Attorney General Steve Marshall said in a statement.
Barber had been convicted and sentenced to death for beating Dorothy Epps in 2001. Prosecutors said Barber, a handyman, confessed to killing the 75-year-old woman with a hammer and fleeing with her purse. Jurors had voted 11 to 1 to recommend the death sentence, which was handed down by a judge.
Before he was put to death, Barber told his family he loved him and apologized to Epps’ family.
“I want to tell the Epps family that I love them. I’m sorry for what happened, Mr. Barber said. There are no words to express what I feel. »
Barber added that he wanted to say to the governor “and to the people in this room that I forgive you for what you are about to do.”
It was the first execution carried out in Alabama this year, after the state halted executions in November. Alabama Governor Kay Ivey had announced a pause in executions to conduct an internal review of proceedings.
The move came after the state halted two lethal injections due to difficulties getting IVs into the convicts’ veins.
Barber’s execution came hours after Oklahoma executed Jemaine Cannon, who stabbed a Tulsa woman to death with a butcher’s knife in 1995 after escaping from a prison labor facility.
The governor of Alabama announced in February that the state was resuming executions. Alabama Corrections Commissioner John Hamm said the prison system has beefed up its team of medical professionals, ordered new equipment and conducted additional rehearsals.
The last-minute legal battle centered on Alabama’s ability to gain intravenous access in past executions. Barber’s lawyers unsuccessfully petitioned the courts to block the execution, saying the state had a history of not “carrying out an execution by lethal injection in a manner consistent with the Constitution.”
The state has indicated in legal documents that it used different members of the lethal injection team. The state also changed the deadline to carry out the execution from midnight to 6 a.m. to allow more time for preparations and last-minute appeals.
The Supreme Court denied Barber’s stay request without comment. Judge Sonia Sotomayor wrote a dissenting opinion joined by Judges Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson. She said the court allowed “Alabama to experiment again with human life.”
The Eighth Amendment requires more than a state promise that this time will be different. The Court should not allow Alabama to test the effectiveness of its internal review by using Barber as a “guinea pig”.
Judge Sonia Sotomayor, in a dissenting opinion
The Alabama Attorney General’s office had urged the Supreme Court to authorize the execution.
The state wrote that previous executions had been called off due to a “confluence of events, including health issues unique to each inmate and last-minute litigation by inmates, which significantly reduced the time officials had to carry out the executions.”
In the hours leading up to the scheduled execution, Barber received 22 visitors and two phone calls, and had a final meal, a prison spokesman said.
After speaking his last words, Barber spoke with a spiritual advisor who accompanied him to death’s antechamber. When the drugs were administered, Mr. Barber’s eyes closed and his abdomen pulsated several times. Her breathing slowed until she was no longer visible.