Fecha de recepci贸n: 11/06/2011 Fecha de aceptaci贸n: 10/08/2011 WOMAN ON DEATH ROW MUJER MUERTA EN EL CAMINO Dr. Edward J. Schauer College of Juvenile Justice ejschauer@pvamu.edu Estados Unidos de Am茅rica Woman on death row. By: Velma Barfield. Forward by: Ruth Bell Graham. Afterward by: Anne Graham Lotz. (Nashville, TN: Oliver-Nelson Books, 1985. Pp. XII-175) (ISBN 0-8407-9531-9). The application of the death penalty in the United States of America (US) was officially blocked by the US Supreme Court case, Furman v. Georgia, 408 U.S. 238 (1972). The Furman decision declared the death penalty unconstitutional as it was being applied across the US. In her book, Wretched sisters: Examining gender and capital punishment, (New York: Peter Lang, 2007), Mary Welek Atwell shares the following insight: Between 1967 and 1977, not one person was executed in the United A帽o 4, vol. VII agosto-diciembre 2011/Year 4, vol. VII August-December 2011 www.somecrimnl.es.tl
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States. It was generally known that the Supreme Court was likely to accept a case that raised the issue of the death penalty's constitutionality (P., 18). The death penalty de facto moratorium was officially ended by the US Supreme Court case, Gregg v. Georgia, 428 U.S. 153 (1976). Velma (Margie) Barfield, the author of Woman on death row, was the first female convicted murderer executed in the US after the Gregg decision -- actually, the first woman executed in the US since 1967. Executed at the Central Prison in Raleigh, North Carolina, at 2:15 AM, November 2, 1984, Barfield was also the first woman executed in the US by lethal injection. The author wrote the preface to this book in October 1984, less than one month from the date of her execution: In it she explains that her spiritual advisors encouraged Barfield to write her story for publication. Ruth Bell Graham, wife of the well-known and well-respected Christian evangelist, Billy Graham, made connections between Barfield and Victor Oliver, the president of Oliver-Nelson Books, a major book publisher. Oliver visited her on death row; and left her presence so impressed, that he sent the writer, Cecil Murphey, she says, to help me tell my story (P., vii). Woman on Death Row belongs to the same genre as the book which reports on the life and execution of Karla Faye Tucker, Karla Faye tucker set free: Life and faith on death row. By Linda Strom. (Colorado Springs, CO: WaterBrook Press, 2006. Pp. 240) (ISBN 0-87788-775-6, $11.99). In the preface, Barfield convincingly states that the issue most important to her during these last days of her life was not life itself, nor was it her freedom, nor was it her drug addiction, her murderous felonies, or her treatment by others in prison. Rather, the most important issues in her life were her newfound religious faith; and her rehabilitation into a life of helping other persons in their needs, and sharing her faith with them. The first two chapters explain the arrest, police interrogation, and confession of Barfield for the murder of her boy friend, with whom she lived. In the next nine chapters, 3 through 11, the author steps back in time first in chapter 3, to tell about her troubled childhood. She lived in poverty with a violent father who raped her at age 13; and a mother who was incapable of standing up to her father to protect her and her 8 siblings. In chapter 4, entitled, For Want of Love, she tells of eloping at age 17 with a young man from the church she attended, in order to find that love she did not find at home, and to escape from her father's brutal control. Chapters 5 through 9 chronicle the development of Velma Barfield's extreme addiction to over the counter and prescription drugs. She began her overreliance upon prescription drugs as a result of complications from injuries she sustained from an automobile accident. Next she suffered a nervous breakdown; then, further suffered from long bouts of severe depression. She found that it was not difficult to get medical doctors to write prescriptions without checking whether other physicians were prescribing drugs for her; so Barfield often had six or more doctors simultaneously writing multiple prescriptions for her. Barfield's difficulties lay in that the doctors' appointments, and the prescription drugs cost money beyond her income from relatively unskilled jobs doing domestic work and in caring for elderly and handicapped persons in their homes. She misappropriated the money of those she served, as well as the money of her mother, her lovers, and her victims in order to keep up her drug habit. In her drug-befuddled mind, it apparently made perfect sense to poison her victims to cover her thefts of money from them, and then to nurse them back to health 2
to make money with which to repay what she had taken from them. The lack of sustainability in Barfield's logic, is shown in that, as far as is known, all of her victims died of the poisonings. Barfield considers her background leading up to her jailing while awaiting trial for capital murder to be important to the telling of her story: This is told in the first 11 chapters. But Barfield contends that her far more essential and significant story is told in chapters 12 through 21: These journal her days behind bars where real life began for her in jail while awaiting trial and imprisonment; and was further developed and practiced by her in prison, while awaiting execution. Atwell explains Velma Barfield's special experience behind bars in the following terms: To pious people who heard of her religious conversion in the Robeson County jail, Barfield became a "radiant witness" to the power of divine salvation (Atwell, 2007, Pp., 31-32). Much disagreement exists amongst professional penologists, legal experts, seminarians, and average citizens as to the reality of change in inmates who claim to have had religious conversion experiences while in jail or in prison. Especially contentious is the question of the veracity of many jail house conversions. Many inmates on death row claim to have had divine changes of their hearts with the simple motive that they appear to be better risks for decisions of executive clemency. On the other hand, never once did Velma Barfield argue that her religious conversion experience should be taken into consideration as the North Carolina governor considered clemency in her behalf. She did however argue that her life of service to others while she lived behind bars was proof of her rehabilitation. Regardless of the outcome of her appeals, and only days from her scheduled execution date, Barfield wrote Ruth Graham explaining that, If I am executed on August 31, I know the Lord will give me dying grace, just as He gave me saving grace, and has given me living grace (P., 140). Velma Barfield appears to have been at ease with her planned execution. Other death row inmates have given accounts (similar to that of Barfield) of their changes in life and focus from their religious experiences while in jail or on death row: These include Karla Faye Tucker and Anthony Graves (personal communication, February 2011). Woman on death row may best be used in the college classroom as a companion volume to a primary textbook. In the reading of this book, the student may glimpse the basic human attitudes or emotions, the faces of fear, loss, and hope -- those close inner feelings which prison life tends to exaggerate.
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