You see, James Barney Hubbard was 74 years-old and a very sick man. But the state saw no reason to wait, just for a few more days, for Hubbard to die of natural courses. Hubbard had been on death row for 27 long years.
Hubbard's failing body kept him lying in bed -- a bunk on Alabama's death row -- most of the last days of his life. Other prisoners say they walked Hubbard's wobbly frame to the showers and listened to him complain about the pain in his body; the cancer in his colon, the cancer in his prostate, the hypertension and the aching back. The prisoners washed him and combed his hair, because Hubbard couldn't.
When spasms of senile dementia made him forget who he was - what he was - the prisoners told Hubbard; you're a 74-year-old, small-town Alabama man, gone bad, a convicted murderer, the oldest prisoner on "America's Death Row." One month ago, Hubbard had to leave these most unlikely of caretakers behind, when he was transported to Holman Prison - a drab grey prison, set back in the cotton fields of lower Alabama.
As the sun was tipping toward the horizon on August 05, Hubbard was put to death by lethal injection, becoming the oldest prisoner executed in the United States in more than six decades.
If we're going to call ourselves an educated and civilised society, can some one with a brain please tell me the point in executing Hubbard? He had a mere days of natural life left. It seems so mean-spirited, nasty, hateful and cruel.
Hubbard's attorneys had argued that his execution would be an act of "cruel and unusual" punishment and an indefensible stroke of public vengeance against an old sick man who also had a low IQ to go along with a host of ailments, including hepatitis and emphysema. An old, frail man isn't dangerous. But the courts and the governor of Alabama, Bob Riley, refused to stop the execution. James Barney Hubbard died by lethal injection injection at 6:36 PM. Hubbard last meal was fried green tomatoes, bacon and pineapple slices slathered with mayonnaise.
Jimmy Montgomery (the murdered victim's son) said after witnessing Hubbard's execution
"I'd just as soon see the electric chair or the firing squad; it looked like he went kind of peaceful, just dozed off. I would have just loved to see him suffering a little more."
Such vile vengenace ... enough to make the rest of the world sick! To you Bob Riley ... may you live a long and happy life!
By ACADP posted 9 August 04
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AUSTRALIAN COALITION AGAINST DEATH PENALTY
© ACADP Incorporated ACADP.com
Internet Resource on Capital Punishment
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