James Barber, the first prisoner Alabama is preparing to execute since a series of troubled lethal injection attempts led to a pause in executions, says he is not afraid to die this week but remains concerned about the state’s ability to carry out out the procedure.
Barber, a handyman on death row for the 2001 murder of an elderly homemaker named Dorothy Epps, said he is skeptical of the state’s «top-down» review after a foreclosure last summer that involved a three-hour delay and then two foreclosures last fall that could not be completed. due to difficulties in inserting intravenous lines into the veins of inmates.
“I am not afraid of death,” Barber, 64, said in a telephone interview from the William C. Holman Correctional Center in Atmore, where he will be executed Thursday night unless an appeals court intervenes. “I have quite a bit of trepidation about the process that they obviously haven’t perfected — being in their hands and being first after they didn’t do a real review of the protocol and they didn’t make any real changes.”
Following a three-month review, Gov. Kay Ivey announced in February that executions would resume after state corrections commissioner John Hamm said internal changes were underway, including ordering new equipment and guaranteeing adequate staffing. But details about the review’s findings were not released, and critics have said an outside agency should have been tasked with evaluating the state’s capital punishment protocols.
“I don’t know what to expect,” Barber said. “But of course, I know that I am in the hands of God, so it is not fear. It is difficult to explain.»
Protocol Changes
Barber spoke to NBC News on Saturday before his lawyers argued Monday in a federal appeals court to block the execution for fear of «a strong possibility of substantial harm.» It is unclear when the appeals court might rule.
The state attorney general’s office declined to comment Tuesday. He said in arguments in federal court that he was showing «good faith» by using a new IV team whose members are properly licensed, The Associated Press reported. The state also said that no person responsible for placing IV lines in past executions would be involved in Barber’s execution and that additional straps would be made available to secure an inmate on the execution stretcher.
If the execution goes ahead, it would also be the first to proceed under a new procedure. approved by the state Supreme Court that allows the governor to set a time frame for when a death row inmate can be executed, rather than a single day that imposed a midnight deadline.
Corrections officials wrote in a February letter to Ivey that the midnight rule had put «unnecessary deadline pressure on Department staff.»
Ivey, a Republican, has called the change «a victory for justice.» His office did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday. She has said that the “brief pause in executions was necessary to make sure that we can successfully deliver that justice and that closure” to the families of the victims.
Make peace
Barber was found guilty of robbery and murder in the death of 75-year-old Epps, whom he had met after dating his daughter and working at his home in Harvest, according to court records. Barber used his fists and a hammer to hit Epps before he fled with his bag.
Barber has said that he was using drugs at the time and did not know why he attacked Epps.
A jury voted 11-1 to recommend that he be sentenced to death. Alabama allows a non-unanimous jury decision in the penalty phase of a trial; a effort to change that in the Legislature it was unsuccessful this year.
Barber is set to be executed by lethal injection.
Several members of Epps’s family traveled to Alabama this week for the execution. At least one of his grandchildren, Sarah Gregory, has forgiven Barber, telling The Atlantic in May that she wrote him a letter explaining how he needed to let go of his anger.
“I pray that when you respond to God you have peace and acceptance in your soul,” Gregory wrote. “I pray that when you see Grandma again, she will hug you and tell you that she is fine. … I forgive you Jimmy. I forgive you for everything you did.»
The couple began to communicate and eventually spoke on the phone. Gregory, of Maryland, told NBC News that he planned to travel to Alabama for the execution, but declined to comment further before the appeals process is resolved.
He previously told The Atlantic: «I spent so much time believing in ‘an eye for an eye’, I’ve changed.»
Barber said Gregory’s forgiveness is «just unbelievable» after an act so inhumane that it was «unforgivable.»
“And yet here I am at this point. I have been forgiven,» Barber said, adding: «I owe a debt of gratitude.»
‘Nobody wants to die’
Barber began reading the Bible in prison and said he found salvation and purpose in his life through Christianity. He wrote to Gregory that he was sorry and that «if it weren’t for the grace of God, he would have left me.»
«I don’t want people to think, well, I want to die,» Barber said. «Nobody wants to die. I believe that there are many things that I can achieve and people that I can help. Change hearts. I would like to be close, I would. But just so we’re clear, I’m not clinging to this life. And beg, beg for more from a governor who would never do that anyway.»
Barber said he is perplexed by how officials like Ivey, who has supported an abortion ban to uphold the «sanctity of life,» can allow people to be executed in cases where the victims’ families plead for leniency.
Relatives of the victim opposed the execution of Joe Nathan James Jr., a convicted murderer who died by lethal injection in July 2022 after a three-hour delay related to trouble finding a vein.
«When the time came for Joe James’s execution, the victim’s family cried out to [Ivey] out of mercy: ‘We don’t want any harm to happen to him. We have forgiven him,’” Barber said. “And she looked at them and her own words were ‘Yes, but I have to make it an example.’ What happened to ‘all life is precious’? What happened that you’re trying to get closure for the victim’s family? That’s not what you’re doing.
On Tuesday, other death row inmates at Barber prison representing the group Project Hope to Abolish the Death Penalty held a vigil for him. Before each scheduled execution, the men bang on their cell doors to let the condemned prisoner know that he is not alone.
“We are with them to the end,” said a death row inmate and member of the group who declined to be named for fear of reprisals. «And that’s really what it’s all about: being here for each other and for the damned.»