(Reuters) – Alabama on Thursday planned to execute a man convicted of beating an elderly woman to death two decades ago, marking the state’s first execution since February when Governor Kay Ivey allowed his sentencing to begin again after a review.
James Barber, 64, is scheduled to be executed by lethal injection after 6 p.m. local time Thursday at the William Holman Correctional Center in Atmore, Alabama. He was convicted and sentenced to death for killing Dorothy Epps, 75, during a robbery in her Harvest, Alabama, home on the night of May 20, 2001.
Ivey suspended the death penalty in November and ordered a review of his country’s lethal injection system after a string of executions last year. In the third failed conviction, officials were unable to set up an intravenous line for a condemned inmate before the death warrant expired.
The Republican governor lifted the moratorium after the Department of Corrections added more medical professionals, acquired new equipment and practiced executions. The government has extended the time allowed to carry out executions before the warrant expires.
Barber argued to the United States Court of Appeals that his execution should be stayed because he is at high risk of serious injury and “torture” under current rules. The court rejected the appeal on Wednesday.
Legal and ethical questions surround capital punishment in the United States after several lethal injections have been carried out in recent years. State and federal governments have struggled to get the medicines they need.
The number of people killed in the United States has dropped significantly since 1999, when 98 people were killed. The death penalty was reinstated in the United States in 1976.
In the past five years, 78 inmates have been sentenced to death, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
(Reporting by Brendan O’Brien in Chicago; Editing by Sandra Maler)
Copyright 2023 Thomson Reuters.
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