Alabama death row inmate James Barber is executed following scrutiny over state’s lethal injection process

By Dakin Andone, Rebekah Riess and Melissa Alonso, CNN

(CNN) — Alabama death row inmate James Barber was executed early Friday morning after the US Supreme Court denied his request for a stay, despite his claim that lethal injection could result in cruel and unusual punishment.

Barber was sentenced to death for the 2001 murder of 75-year-old Dorothy Epps. His time of death was 1:56 a.m. CT Friday at the William C. Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore, according to a statement from Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall.

“Justice has been served. This morning, James Barber was put to death for the terrible crime he committed over two decades ago: the especially heinous, atrocious, and cruel murder of Dorothy Epps,” Marshall said. “I ask the people of Alabama to join me in praying for the victim’s family and friends, that they might now be able to find some sense of peace and closure.”

During his appeals process, Barber asked a US District Court to prevent the state from executing him by any method other than nitrogen hypoxia, an alternative to lethal injection that is allowed under Alabama law but has yet to be used.

Barber argued an execution by lethal injection would violate his rights under the Eighth Amendment, according to his initial complaint, which pointed to three allegedly botched executions in Alabama last year, in which Barber’s attorneys said Department of Corrections officials struggled to set intravenous lines in the condemned inmates’ veins to deliver the fatal drugs.

One of those executions ultimately resulted in the death of the inmate while the two others were called off, with the state citing time constraints due to late-night court battles that prevented the executions from being carried out before the inmates’ execution warrants expired. Taken together, they prompted heightened scrutiny of Alabama’s lethal injection process and led Gov. Kay Ivey last November to ask Marshall to halt executions for a “top-to-bottom review” of its protocol.

In February, Ivey said executions could resume after the Department of Corrections completed its review and said it would take several steps to address issues with the lethal injection protocol, including expanding the pool of personnel available for the execution team and conducting rehearsals to ensure staff were well-trained, among other steps.

Barber’s execution early Friday came after the US Supreme Court sided with the decisions of two lower courts to proceed with carrying out his death. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, Justice Elena Kagan and Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented from the denial of application for stay, documents show.

Barber – who was the first inmate executed since the state’s review – had argued Alabama had “not made any meaningful improvements to their lethal injection protocol,” according to his motion for a preliminary injunction, other than by expanding the window in which officials could carry out an execution.

In his appeal, Barber’s attorneys argued he faces a “substantial risk of severe harm” due to his elevated body mass index, which they said makes it more difficult to access his veins. This complication makes him vulnerable to suffering a failed lethal injection, they said.

Instead, Barber had asked to be put to death by nitrogen gas. The state legislature has approved this alternative execution method, but the state has said it hasn’t finalized its protocols.

The US District Court for the Middle District of Alabama denied Barber’s motion, prompting his attorneys to appeal earlier this week to the 11th Circuit. That court, however, similarly rejected Barber’s argument by upholding the district court’s decision in an opinion Wednesday. The judges wrote, in part, that the inmate’s claim he would suffer the same problems as the inmates before him was “purely speculative” in light of the Department of Corrections’ newly implemented changes.

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CNN’s Emma Tucker and Aya Elamroussi contributed to this report.