Death Sentence (42 page)

When she was a small child, Velma recalled with great emotion after coaxing by Lewis, a man who was a neighbor took her to a barn and forced her to commit oral sex. When she was eight or ten, she said, an older male relative began forcing sexual relations on her and this continued over a period of years. Yet another male relative also had forced himself on her, she said.

Velma was reluctant to talk about being raped by her father, Lewis reported, because some of her brothers didn’t believe it and had been angered and hurt when it was made public in June.

Later, Lewis wrote that Velma had been “extremely frightened” by telling about the sexual molestations. “It seems that Mrs. Barfield would rather be executed and have the public think well of her family than reveal the extraordinary psychopathology and violence that existed in her family.”

Lewis spent six hours interviewing Velma. She reviewed the reports of all of Velma’s previous psychiatric examinations and psychological tests, as well as her medical records. She wrote a nine-page, single-spaced report.

Her diagnosis: “Velma Barfield is a woman who, throughout her childhood and adolescence was brutally physically assaulted and sexually molested by her severely disturbed father and … (others). She suffers from a bipolar mood disorder. This diagnosis was formerly called manic depressive psychosis. It is characterized by episodes of extreme depression, suicidal behaviors, loss of appetite and extreme weight loss during its depressive stages. The manic phases are characterized by episodes of uncontrolled behaviors and severely impaired judgment. During such times patients are often filled with uncontrollable rage and act in aggressive ways that are uncharacteristic during nonpsychotic periods. In Velma Barfield’s circumstances, it is extremely likely that the extraordinary physical and sexual abuse suffered at the hands of her male relatives contributed to the magnitude of the psychotic rage expressed during her manic phases.”

The tragedy of Velma’s situation was increased, Lewis noted, because her condition had never been properly diagnosed. Her doctors saw only the depressive side of her condition and prescribed medications for that. Her first major depression as an adult had come after her hysterectomy, Lewis noted, and likely had been precipitated by diminished hormones because of removal of her ovaries. This marked the beginning of Velma’s problems with drugs.

But the antidepressants that she took in great quantities could be extremely dangerous when she entered manic periods, Lewis noted, producing psychosis. “During such states the individual is not in control of his or her behavior. Such individuals have impaired judgment and tend to act irresponsibly, and, at times, to commit violent acts that under normal circumstances they would not commit.”

Lewis thought that Velma seemed to sense this and attempted to counter it by taking huge amounts of Valium to stabilize herself. “I felt I would go raving mad without Valium,” Velma told her.

“Her seeking of Valium,” Lewis wrote, “was clearly her unconscious but perceptive way of trying to control her behaviors and was an attempt to stop herself from acting in violent, senseless ways.”

Velma had not been capable of controlling her thoughts or her actions when she poisoned people, Lewis determined, thus was not liable for their deaths. If her condition had been properly diagnosed and she had been given proper medications for her mania as well as for her depression, Lewis concluded, “It is unlikely that Velma Barfield would ever have committed any violent acts.”

Jimmie Little handed his application for clemency to Jack Cozort, the governor’s legal counsel, on Saturday morning, September 15. A perfectionist, he had been up much of the night completing it, making sure nothing was left out. The appeal was more than two inches thick. With it was an eighteen-minute video of Velma, carefully edited.

With the overview was a history of clemency in North Carolina, which had been granted in forty percent of death-penalty cases. In certain periods, half of those slated for death had been granted life sentences instead by compassionate governors.

Velma’s prison years were covered in a five-page section, and her effect on other prisoners was reinforced by excerpts from letters written to her by other inmates and ex-inmates.

“If I could, I would trade places with you. … I am not worthy of even knowing someone like you.”

“You helped me so much—all of us on C-hall.”

“I don’t have no State Sis or Bro or nothing and I don’t want none. But a State Mom. I will always care and pray for you and I will try to stay out of trouble!”

“I love you, Miss Margie. The memory I have of you always helps me and makes me smile.”

Little was counting heavily on the recently completed psychiatric report by Dr. Lewis, which he hoped the governor would consider as strong new evidence. He introduced the report in a section titled ‘Why Homicide?”

The Catholic Center, only a short distance from Central Prison, was the staging area on Tuesday. September 18, for Velma’s supporters, who hoped to convince Governor Hunt that she should be spared. Starting before nine, vans shuttled more than four dozen supporters to meetings with the governor in his office at the State Capitol.

The first to go were Ronnie, Pam, Kirby, and Faye. Jimmie Little was already at the capitol, where he would spend the day coordinating this last hope for saving Velma. He ushered them into the governor’s office and made introductions.

The governor, Ronnie later remembered, was cordial, polite, with an air of formality and control. He told them that he was willing to hear whatever they had to say, that he would give it serious consideration and make a prompt decision.

Faye spoke first and immediately broke down. Her sister was not the person who had committed the murders, she said, crying, and if the state executed her, it would be executing a person who hadn’t known what she was doing.

Pam cried, too, and had difficulty speaking, finally breaking down and pleading, “Please don’t let them kill my mother.”

Neither Pam nor Faye had believed that this moment would come. Both had assumed that the courts would change Velma’s sentence to life. Neither still could accept that she actually would be killed, and both were placing total faith in the governor. They didn’t care about politics. They believed he would see that Velma was a person redeemed, doing good for others, and that she deserved to live.

Ronnie didn’t share that confidence. From the moment he shook the governor’s hand he felt an artificiality and insincerity about him, and he had little doubt that the governor’s first consideration would be political. Even as Ronnie spoke about his mother’s problems, her transformation, her remorse, her desire to help others— making all the points Jimmie Little had told him to get in—he knew what the governor’s decision would be. He was certain of it, and an all-too-familiar sense of resignation and hopelessness began to settle over him.

“It was just like during the trial when I knew all along that she was going to get the death penalty,” he later recalled.

The four spent nearly forty-five minutes with the governor, and afterward reporters and TV cameras were waiting. Pam and Faye were in no condition to face reporters. Little pulled Ronnie aside to offer suggestions. Ronnie struggled not to let his mood show as he talked to the reporters.

“We do not ask for forgiveness from the governor,” he said. “We ask for compassion so that she may spend her remaining years in prison.”

Among the others who spoke to the governor on Velma’s behalf this day were members of the support committee, former inmates at Women’s Prison, and numerous ministers. Those writing letters in Velma’s behalf included Hugh Hoyle and Ruth Graham, neither of whom was opposed to capital punishment.

Alice Storms arrived at the capitol the following day with her children. It was her second visit to the capitol that week. On Monday, two days earlier, she, Margie Pittman, Sylvia Andrews and others had made a preemptive strike, coming to the capitol early, carrying cardboard boxes and file folders filled with letters and petitions opposing clemency. Alice had never relented in her campaign. She had gone door-to-door collecting signatures, had stopped cars at intersections. More than 2,400 people had signed the letters and petitions she and the others delivered Monday before TV cameras and newspaper photographers. On Wednesday, as they arrived to present their case to the governor, they brought even more letters.

After her meeting with the governor, Alice described her father’s agonizing death in detail for reporters and said that Velma should experience arsenic, too.

“I’d like for her to get a dose of it before she dies so she’ll know how it feels.”

She wasn’t seeking vengeance, she said, only justice. “I have no feeling for Velma Barfield. No hate. No anger. No nothing. God has her soul. It’s between God and her what He does with her soul.”

The looming decision on Velma’s life, combined with the increasingly strident and hard-fought Senate race, brought a new surge of attention to Velma. In addition to network news and wire service reports, major stories about Velma, written by staff reporters, appeared on the front pages of some of the nation’s largest newspapers— the
Los Angeles Times, Dallas Morning News, Chicago Tribune, Philadelphia Inquirer. USA Today
had a page-one story with a half-page question-and-answer feature with Velma inside. A photo of Ronnie and Pam appeared in the
New York Times
above a story headlined “Clemency Plea Weighed in Carolina.” Three full pages about Velma dominated the newspaper
Liberation
in Europe.

And reporters and producers continued to call.
Time
magazine wanted to interview Velma. So did
60 Minutes.

It seemed as if the whole world was waiting to see if a supposedly liberal New South governor, who was in the political battle of his life with a God-spouting, law-and-order, Old South senator, would allow a serial-killer grandmother to live to do Jesus’ work in prison. Velma Barfield had come a long way from the sandy, sadness-bearing South River fields of her childhood.

22

Governor Hunt cancelled all appointments and sequestered himself in the governor’s mansion with his legal counsel, Jack Cozort, on Thursday, September 27, to make his decision on Velma’s life. Shortly after four Cozort called Jimmie Little.

Little called Women’s Prison to tell Jennie Lancaster that he would be coming to inform Velma of the decision. But before that, he went to the state Supreme Court to file an affidavit on Velma’s behalf.

Velma had signed the affidavit after long talks with Little and her children. In it she said that if clemency was denied she wanted no lawyers other than Little and Burr taking action on her behalf, nor did she want any more stays of execution. “If I am to be executed,” she said, “I want it to be done so that no one will go through any more pain and suffering than they have already.”

Because of the widespread news coverage, Little and Burr were well aware that many groups and many lawyers might try to insert themselves into Velma’s case at the last minute, hoping to draw attention to their causes or themselves, and they wanted to cut off any chance of that.

As Velma waited in the administration building, she knew that the governor had reached a decision, but she had no hint what it was. She knew as soon as she saw her lawyer’s face. Words were unnecessary, but Little spoke them anyway. “The governor will be denying clemency,” he said softly.

Velma didn’t speak. She closed her eyes and Little knew she was praying. When she looked up, she saw that Little’s eyes had filled with tears.

“Jimmie, we knew this could happen,” she said. “You’ve done everything you could. Nobody could have done any more. You and Dick have been so good to me. You can’t blame yourself.”

The governor had called a press conference at the capitol, and Velma and Little listened to the radio broadcast.

“I have completed my review of the Velma Barfield case, and I am prepared to announce my decision,” he began, then went on for two minutes before he got to it.

“After carefully studying all the issues, I do not believe that the ends of justice, or deterrence, would be served by my intervention in this case. I cannot in good conscience justify making an exception to the law as enacted by our legislature, or overruling those twelve jurors who, after hearing the evidence, concluded that Mrs. Barfield should pay the maximum penalty for her brutal actions.

“Death by arsenic poisoning is slow and agonizing. Victims are literally tortured to death. Mrs. Barfield was convicted of killing one person in this fashion; she admitted to three more, including her mother, and there was evidence of yet a fifth.

“It is my sworn duty as governor to uphold the fundamental rule of law. I am satisfied that I have made a decision consistent with that duty.”

Not surprisingly, the first question was about the effect the decision might have on the Senate campaign.

“I have no idea,” Hunt responded curtly, “and that does not make any difference whatsoever. That has no place in the consideration of a matter of this kind, and it has had none here.”

Later, his press secretary, Brent Hackney, told reporters that the governor’s decision was “final and irreversible.”

Little was so upset and despondent after listening to the governor that he could no longer control his emotions, and he spoke out angrily. Velma went to him, put her hands on his shoulders, and said, “Jimmie, you can’t let yourself be like this. You’ve got to forgive him.”