Geoffrey West, 49, is scheduled to be executed by nitrogen suffocation on Thursday, September 25.
Mr. West was sentenced to death for the 1997 fatal shooting of Margaret Parrish Berry during a robbery of the Etowah County gas station where she worked as an attendant.
Her son, Will Berry, was 11 years old at the time. In an op-ed earlier this month, he wrote that he does not want the State of Alabama to execute Mr. West.
“That won’t bring my mother back; it will only add to the pain I have lived with since the night she was shot,” Mr. Berry wrote. “I believe there is a better way.”
Mr. Berry’s faith has led him to forgive Mr. West. “I believe that in seeking to execute Mr. West, the state of Alabama is playing God,” he wrote. “I don’t want anyone to exact revenge in my name, nor in my mother’s. I believe life without the possibility of parole is just punishment.”
“[W]hat is being done in my name is not what I need or want,” Mr. Berry wrote, calling on Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey to grant clemency so that he can meet and pray with Mr. West, who has agreed to meet with Mr. Berry.
“Even in what may be the last weeks of his life, he is willing to spend time with me and reckon with the harm he caused,” Mr. Berry wrote. “I believe that speaks well of him, despite the deadly mistake he made the night he killed my mother.”
“I want to speak with Mr. West heart to heart. I want to tell him I forgive him, that my mother forgives him, and that God loves him,” Mr. Berry wrote, adding that granting clemency—or even a reprieve to allow time for him to meet with Mr. West—would give him comfort.
Alabama officials denied Mr. Berry’s request to meet with Mr. West.
“On the Back Burner”
Geoffrey West was just 21 years old at the time of the offense. He was too poor to hire a lawyer and was appointed counsel who later testified that they put preparation for the penalty phase ”on the back burner.”
Instead of investigating and preparing to present evidence that would persuade the jury to impose life without parole instead of the death penalty, court filings show that trial counsel said they “just sort of scrambled to do what you could if there was a conviction.”
Geoffrey had no significant prior criminal history and had caused no problems in the county jail, but the court nonetheless forced him to wear a stun belt throughout his trial.
Each day, according to court filings, deputies would ‘test’ the stun belt in front of Mr. West by discharging its 50,000 or more volts that created a visible arc of electric current. Mr. West was told that, if a deputy decided he needed to be restrained, the electric charge would completely incapacitate him—and cause him to lose bowel and bladder control. Mr. West’s appointed counsel did not object to forcing their client to spend the trial in fear of being electrocuted.
The penalty phase started the same day the jury convicted Mr. West of capital murder, filings explain. It lasted less than three hours. Trial counsel presented no evidence and called no witnesses. Even though Geoffrey had no significant prior criminal history, counsel told the jury that the only applicable mitigating circumstance was Geoffrey’s young age.
The jury deliberated for 40 minutes before returning a nonunanimous verdict for death.
Even without any mitigating evidence, two jurors voted for life without parole, leaving only the bare minimum number of jurors voting for the death penalty. The State’s failure to convince 12 jurors to impose the death penalty would bar Mr. West’s execution in nearly every other state.
Mr. West’s execution is the fifth scheduled in Alabama this year.