Alabama is going to kill James Barber, they plan to do it on July 20th. But Barber has a unique request and it has left the state of Alabama grappling with a particularly prickly issue that raises profound questions about the nature of justice and the use of state power. At the center of this storm is James Barber’s request for a departure from the usual lethal injection method. Barber instead has asked to be killed by nitrogen hypoxia, a process involving increasing the proportion of nitrogen in the air until he suffocates.
The method is untested but it was officially approved in 2018, leaving uncertainty over its implementation. This has resulted in a tangle of mixed messages from state officials. The Alabama Attorney General’s Office seems willing to acquiesce and kill Barber with nitrogen hypoxia and has stated that should the courts side with Barber, the execution should be permitted to proceed. Yet, a spokesperson for the Alabama Department of Corrections (ADOC) has expressed a contrary view, stating that the department is not yet ready to kill someone this way.
Adding to the confusion, the ADOC has indicated that although many preparations have been made for a nitrogen hypoxia execution, the protocol is not yet complete. Moreover, once the protocol is established, there will be the matter of training the people to kill people in this manner, implying a timeline that may not align with the day it has been decided they will kill Barber.
The labyrinth of contradictory statements makes it unclear whether the state will proceed with the nitrogen hypoxia execution next month if Barber wins his federal case. The lack of clarity is not an isolated incident. It’s part of a broader pattern of confusion and muddled messages and questionable decisions in the wake of several botched executions in the state last year.
Following a series of problematic lethal injections, the state’s Governor called for a halt to executions in November, pending an investigation into the state’s lethal injection procedures. The investigation however has not been transparent and the state failed to release its internal audit. Instead, vague promises to increase staff for executions and rehearse the process have been made. In an unprecedented move, the state has even been granted permission to extend the timeframe for executions beyond a specific day, creating a window in which the state can attempt to carry out an execution over hours or even days.
In this dance of death, the state appears to be improvising steps, guided less by a coherent policy and more by a turbulent mix of practical considerations, legal challenges, and ethical dilemmas. The case of James Barber is emblematic of a broader struggle, one that raises profound questions about the nature of state power, the meaning of justice, and the limits of humaneness in the ultimate punishment.