Florida executes double murderer James Barnes by lethal injection

Aug. 2 (UPI) -- Florida executed death row inmate James Barnes by lethal injection Thursday. He had spent decades in prison for murdering his wife and another woman.

Barnes was pronounced dead at 6:13 p.m. at the Florida State Prison northwest of Starke. He was the 104th person executed by Florida since capital punishment was reinstated in 1976.

Andrew Miller, brother of victim Patricia Miller, said his sister and Barnes' wife were hard-working professionals who were someone's daughter, sister or mother.

"No one should live in fear within the safety of their own home. We do. My family does," he said.

Florida Department of Corrections spokeswoman Kayla McLaughlin said during a press conference that the execution happened without incident with 20 witnesses.

Barnes was sentenced to life in prison in 1998 after the body of his wife, Linda, was found in West Melbourne, Fla. Her body was found in a closet after she had been strangled, according to court records.

In an interview with a West Melbourne detective while serving his sentence, Barnes described how he had entered a condo bedroom window and killed 41-year-old nurse Patrica "Patsy" Miller in 1988.

According to court records, Barnes told a judge while pleading guilty to murdering Miller, "I raped her twice. I tried to strangle her to death. I hit her head with a hammer and killed her and I set her bed on fire."

Barnes' older sister Beth Catron told Florida Today before Thursday's execution that her family is glad the nightmare would soon be over "and maybe we'll be able to sleep in peace."

Gov. Ron DeSantis signed Barnes' death warrant June 22. A judge granted Barnes' motion to drop all appeals in his case dealing with mitigating evidence because Barnes said he wanted his execution to proceed without any delay.

Barnes confessed to filmmaker Werner Herzog that he had killed two other people -- Chester Wetmore, a 15-year-old who went missing in 1986, and Brenda Fletcher, whose body was found in a ditch in Brevard County, Fla., in 1991.

Those cases remain unsolved, with detectives unable to tie Barnes to the killings after Herzog turned over the unedited interview to them.

In February, Florida carried out the state's first execution in more than three years when Donald Dillbeck was killed by lethal injection for the stabbing death of Faye Lamb Vann in Tallahassee.