Velma Barfield wrote Woman on Death Row to tell the story of her life, crimes, imprisonment, and execution. She was the first woman executed in the US after the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976. Barfield describes a troubled childhood with abuse and developing a severe drug addiction. Her addiction led her to steal money and eventually poison several victims. While awaiting trial, she had a religious conversion in jail and dedicated her life to helping others. Barfield was executed in 1984 but found peace with her fate, believing her conversion experience was genuine.

1. Año 4, vol. VII agosto-diciembre 2011/Year 4, vol. VII August-December 2011
www.somecrimnl.es.tl 1
Fecha de recepción: 11/06/2011
Fecha de aceptación: 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 América
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

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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

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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.