By Brendan O’Brien
(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 gave the go-ahead for executions to resume following a review.
James Barber, 64, is scheduled to be put to death by lethal injection after 6 p.m. local time on Thursday at the William Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore, Alabama. He was convicted and sentenced to death for the killing Dorothy Epps, 75, during a robbery in her Harvest, Alabama, home on the night of May 20, 2001.
Ivey suspended capital punishment in November and ordered the review of the lethal injection process in her state after a string of botched executions last year. In the third failed execution, officials were unable to set the intravenous line in the condemned prisoner before the death warrant expired.
The Republican governor lifted the suspension after the Department of Corrections added medical professionals, obtained new equipment and conducted rehearsals for executions. The state also expanded the time allowed for an execution to be carried out before the expiration of the warrant.
Barber argued to the United States Court of Appeals that his execution should be halted because he is at substantial risk of serious harm and “torture” under current protocols. The court denied that appeal on Wednesday.
Legal and ethical questions have swirled around capital punishment in the United States after several lethal injections have been botched in recent years. State governments and the federal government have also struggled to obtain the necessary drugs.
The number of executions in the United States has drastically fallen since 1999, when a record 98 executions were carried out. Capital punishment was reinstated in the United States in 1976.
Over the last five years, a total of 78 death row inmates have been executed, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
(Reporting by Brendan O’Brien in Chicago; Editing by Sandra Maler)
