Joe Nathan James, a 49-year-old African-American, received a lethal injection in a penitentiary in this rural state in the southern United States. He was pronounced dead at 9:27 p.m. local time (02:27 GMT Friday).
He was condemned to the death penalty for having killed, in 1994, Faith Hall, a young woman of 26 years whom he harassed since the end of a short relationship.
Since Alabama set a date for his execution, his victim’s daughters, aged three and six at the time of the tragedy, pleaded for him to be spared.
“Taking her life won’t bring Faith back, it won’t allow us to turn the page,” Terryln Hall told CBS 42.
“We shouldn’t take ourselves for God,” added his sister Toni Hall. “An eye for an eye is not a good principle of life.”
After Governor Kay Ivey’s refusal to intervene, these statements were put forward by Joe Nathan James’ lawyer in an urgent appeal to the United States Supreme Court asking it to stay the execution, in vain.
The Hall sisters “were too young at the time of the trial for their opinion to be taken into account, but the victims and their families (…) deserve to be heard on the question of the sentence finally retained against the criminals”, had writes James Ransom in his appeal, which raises other procedural issues.
After the execution Thursday, Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall said “justice (had) been served.”
“Joe James was put to death for the atrocious act he committed nearly three decades ago: the cold-blooded murder of a young mother, Faith Hall,” he said in a statement. communicated.
He is the eighth convict executed since the beginning of the year in the United States.
