‘Justice Has Finally Been Served’: Alabama Executes Man for Killing Elderly Woman with Claw Hammer

James Barber and Dorothy Epps
Alabama Department of Corrections via AP, findagrave.com
Amy Furr

A man was executed Friday in Alabama after he brutally murdered an elderly woman in 2001 inside her home.

The man’s death took place as state officials resumed lethal injections after the governor ordered an internal review regarding such executions, the Associated Press (AP) reported.

Sixty-four-year-old James Barber received a lethal injection while inside a prison, and authorities pronounced him dead at 1:56 a.m.

The AP report noted that in the final hours, the killer’s attorneys argued the execution should not proceed because of issues officials had with obtaining intravenous access during recent execution instances.

However, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the execution could go ahead.

“Tonight, the justice that James Barber managed to avoid for more than two decades has finally been served. In 2001, 75-year-old Dorothy Epps desperately fought for her life as Mr. Barber brutally and gruesomely beat her to death in her own home,” Gov. Kay Ivey (R-AL) said of the execution.

In 2004, a judge sentenced Barber to death for murdering Epps, whose body was found by a friend of her family, the AP reported at the time, adding the murderer — who was a handyman and contract painter — was an ex-boyfriend of the victim’s daughter.

According to prosecutors, Barber confessed to murdering Epps with a claw hammer and then running from the scene with her purse.

Dorothy Epps (findagrave.com)

In a social media post on Friday, Judicial Watch President Tim Fitton said, “The Supreme Court’s three leftist justices (Sotomayor, Kagan, and Jackson) objected to allowing his execution to proceed because they feared the execution might be botched,” adding they did not name the victim in their dissenting opinion.

He then detailed the slaying at Epps’s home in Harvest, Alabama:

Dorothy Epps was home alone the night of her murder. Mrs. Epps knew and had a friendly relationship with James Barber, who in the past had dated her daughter and had been hired to do repair work on her house. When Barber knocked on Mrs. Epps’s door, she probably invited him inside, having no reason to suspect his malevolent intent.

After entering her home, Barber viciously and mercilessly attacked Mrs. Epps, a 75-year-old woman who weighed 100 pounds, striking her in the face and then beating her to death with his fists and a claw hammer.

The victim suffered injuries that included skull fractures, lacerations, fractured ribs, neck injuries, and bleeding in her brain.

In addition, defensive wounds showed she was facing her killer at some moments and was aware of what was happening while she tried to defend herself during the attack.

Barber left blood all over the home’s floors, furniture, walls, and ceiling. There were also bloody footprints discovered on the woman’s body.

Barber reportedly beat the elderly woman to death to get his hands on drug money, according to WAFF:

The execution was the first to happen in Alabama this year after Ivey announced a pause in order to review procedures, the recent AP article said.

“The move came after the state halted two lethal injections because of difficulties inserting IVs into the condemned men’s veins,” the outlet stated.

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