While several US states have abolished the death penalty in recent years, the Alabama government had begun a review of their implementation procedures, to reintroduce them while making sure they are effective and work better than before.
The death penalty has existed in Alabama since the 19th century and the current Republican governor, Kay Ivey, is a staunch supporter of its importance: on several occasions, including announcing the suspension of executions and the review of the methods by which it is implemented, she has maintained that having certain and effective death sentences is the best response “to the victims and their families”.
Until 1927, the principal method of carrying out the death penalty in Alabama was hanging, later replaced by the electric chair. Now the death sentences are mainly carried out through lethal injections, first of sedatives and then of rocuronium and potassium chloride, two substances which, with particular dosages, paralyze the muscles and cause cardiac arrest.
In Alabama, 2022 has become known as “the year of the wrong executions.” In addition to the two failed ones, of prisoners Alan Miller and Kenneth Smith, another execution, that of Joe Nathan James, was successful after three hours of attempts in which the operators searched for the vein of the prisoner, meanwhile tied to the execution table. In the cases of Miller and Smith, the operators had to stop at midnight, when the warrant for the execution of the death penalty, valid only for that day, expired.
Alabama has some of the strictest rules in the United States regarding the confidentiality of death penalty execution protocols and knowing exactly what happened during those hours and why the operators were unable to carry out the execution is not possible. In Miller’s case, the failure of the operation was attributed to Miller’s overweight and massive build, which would have made it difficult to find the vein. Other cases of failure have been attributed to the advanced age of the detainees, or to disability.
In Barber’s case, the operators will be given 12 hours of time instead of 6, as foreseen up to now: concretely this means that Barber could remain tied to the execution table for half a day, until he is killed. Governor Ivey has also introduced a change in the duration of the execution mandate: until January of this year it lasted 24 hours, now the local government will establish its duration. In Barber’s case it will last 30 hours, all of July 20 and the first six hours of the 21st, but the start of the performance for now is scheduled for six in the evening of July 20.
In a formal request citing Alabama’s many problems with lethal injections, Barber had asked to be killed with nitrogen hypoxia, a practice which consists of making the convict inhale only nitrogen, thus killing him for hypoxia, i.e. lack of oxygen, and which is legal in the United States but has never been tested yet. His lawyers have specified that Barber weighs a lot and has a very massive build, and it might not be easy for the workers to immediately find the vein for the injection: so far, however, the Alabama Attorney General has expressed many objections, arguing that there are still not all means necessary to proceed with nitrogen hypoxia.
Meanwhile, in recent days, the United States has been discussing the revision of the procedures for the execution of the death penalty ordered in Alabama. The review was made during the suspension of executions, introduced in November and lifted on February 24, and has been widely criticized for its lack of transparency.
Unlike what was done in Oklahoma in 2014 or in Tennessee in 2022, in both cases by two Republican administrations as in the case of Alabama, Governor Ivey did not appoint an independent body to carry out the review, but she did to the same Alabama Department of Corrections, the government agency that manages the state prison system, essentially asking an institution to evaluate itself. Last February, more than 170 pastors and preachers in the United States sent an open letter to Ivey asking her to commission an independent body. Furthermore, after the investigation was concluded, the Alabama government did not even give news or disclose details on its results.
The little that is known is due to a letter sent to Ivey by Jon Hamm, the commissioner of the Alabama Department of Corrections, in which Hamm praised Ivey and listed a series of areas that the revision of the procedures would have explored: among these, how prisoners’ appeals against their executions are handled, the education, training and equipment necessary for staff to carry them out, and the number of staff members. Hamm wrote that new officials were hired, additional training was arranged, and additional equipment was purchased to effectively carry out the death sentences.
Ivey has long argued that having effective death sentences is the best way to do justice to people who have suffered the crimes for which the convicted are responsible, without taking into consideration the experiences of reconciliation that in some cases have occurred between the offended people and the inmates. One case is precisely that of Barber, with whom the niece of the woman he killed in 2001 came into contact, initially through an exchange of letters and also developing a friendship over time, writes the Atlantic. Another case was that of Joe Nathan James, the prisoner killed after three hours of attempts despite the explicit request not to carry out the death penalty by the family of the person he had killed.
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"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted."
— Oscar Wilde
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted."
— Oscar Wilde