Authorities in the state of Florida (USA) will execute 61-year-old James Phillip Barnes this Thursday for the 1997 murder of his wife, whom he strangled, and another woman, a nurse, years earlier.
Barnes will receive a lethal injection at 6:00 p.m. local time (22:00 GMT). Florida State Prison (FSP, in English) in Starke, in the county of Bradford, after rejecting the presentation of appeals and indicating his will that the maximum sentence be applied.
(In other news: Singapore executes woman for first time in 20 years for trafficking 30 grams of heroin)
If carried out, Barnes’ execution will be the fifth in Florida so far this year.
Barnes is serving a life sentence for the strangulation of his wife, Linda Barnes, 44, when in 2005 he wrote several letters from prison to a state attorney in which he also claimed responsibility for the murder years before of Patricia “Patsy” Miller, a nurse who lived in Melbourne, on the east coast of Florida.
In the court hearings that were held, Barnes represented himself in court, pleading guilty to the 1988 murder of Miller, who was 41 when she was killed.
(Read: They find a lifeless body in the new anti-immigrant barrier of the Rio Grande)
According to court documents, Barnes entered Miller’s home and, after raping her, tried to strangle her and then struck her over the head with a hammer, a crime to which he pleaded guilty.
Analyzed DNA evidence linked Barnes to Miller’s murder, and he was sentenced to death on December 13, 2007.
As for his wife, Linda, Barnes killed her in 1997 after she found out he was dealing drugs.
The woman’s body was found inside a closet and showed signs of strangulation.
The state of Florida executed Duane Owen, sentenced to death for the murders of two women in 1984, last June, after two appeals by his lawyers to stay the execution for serious mental problems, which were denied.
(See: US Court grants Prosecutor’s Office more time to respond to appeal in Saab case)
It was the fourth execution of the year and number 103 since capital punishment was restored in 1976 in Florida, where there are currently 300 prisoners on “death row”, three of them women.
Since 1973, more than 190 people have been released from death row in the US on evidence of their innocence.Florida, with 30 exonerated from capital punishment, is the state with the highest number, followed by Illinois (22) and Texas (16).
EFE
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