James was convicted of murder and sentenced to die in the 1994 killing of 26-year-old Faith Hall. Hall had briefly dated James before she rejected him and he shot her to death in Birmingham, investigators have said.
The daughters of Hall wanted James to spend the rest of his life imprisoned but pleaded for him not to be executed. Nonetheless, Alabama officials pumped lethal injection drugs into James the night of 28 July as his punishment for Hall’s murder.
James was supposed to be put to death at 6pm that night, but it wasn’t until about 9pm that media witnesses were allowed to enter the execution chamber. Then, it wasn’t until 9.27pm that officials pronounced him dead.
State officials insisted in a statement that “there was nothing out of the ordinary” despite facing questions about the lengthy delay. But later, they modified their statement to say James’s executioners had experienced trouble establishing the intravenous lines carrying the lethal drugs.
