Death by lethal injection in the US despite controversy

In the US state of Alabama, prisoner James Barber, who beat a woman to death in 2001, has been executed after the resumption of his suspended sentence for failing to give lethal injections.

Prosecutors said James Barber, 64, who was executed by lethal injection at a south Alabama prison, confessed to escaping in 2001 after he bludgeoned 75-year-old Dorothy Epps to death with a hammer and stole her purse.

It was Barber’s first execution after Alabama Governor Kay Ivey suspended his death sentence by lethal injection in December 2022 to conduct prison-related procedural checks after botched executions. State officials claimed that the corrections officers responsible for the injection were replaced and that Barber received lethal injections in 6 minutes.

IT WAS APPROVED TO VICTOR’S FAMILY

Barber, who apologized to Epps’s family after he was sentenced to death, said: “I want to tell the Epps family that I love them. I’m sorry for what happened. Words are not enough to describe how I feel right now.

Barber said in court that he forgave the people who sentenced him to death.

In September 2022, there was much criticism that prison officers were unable to give lethal injections to offender named “Allan Miller” despite repeated attempts for about 2 hours, and after a while Miller was left hanging vertically on a gurney.

After another botched execution, the length of the third execution for the same issues caused controversy in the state. Because of these botched executions, Barber’s lawyers had petitioned the court not to impose the death sentence on Barber, noting that the state did not “inject a lethal injection in accordance with the constitution.”

US Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor said Barber was not a lab rat on which procedural checks could be performed. (AA)