Alabama executes man with nitrogen gas for 1997 shooting death of store clerk

ATMORE Ala. (AP) — An Alabama man convicted of killing a woman during a 1997 gas station robbery was put to death Thursday after apologizing to the family and pleas from the victim’s son to spare his life.

Geoffrey Todd West, 50, was pronounced dead at 6:22 p.m. at William C. Holman Correctional Facility, authorities said. The execution was carried out by nitrogen gas, a method Alabama began using last year. It was one of two executions scheduled on the night in the United States.

West was convicted of capital murder in the 1997 shooting death of Margaret Parrish Berry, 33. Berry, the mother of two sons, was shot in the back of the head while lying on the floor behind the counter at Harold’s Chevron in Etowah County on March 28, 1997.

Prosecutors said she was killed execution-style to ensure there was no witness to the robbery. Court records state that $250 was taken from a cookie can that held the store’s money.

A jury convicted West of capital murder during a robbery and voted 10-2 to recommend a death sentence, and the judge accepted that recommendation.

West, in an interview, did not deny killing Margaret Berry. He said that at age 50, he struggles to understand what he did at 21. He and his girlfriend were desperate for cash and went to the store where he once worked to rob it.

“There’s not a day that goes by that I don’t regret it and wish that I could take that back,” West told AP by telephone last week. He said he wants Berry’s family to know he regrets what happened.

“I’m so very sorry for what I’ve taken away from you, and I hope and pray you forgive me,” West said of what he wants to tell Berry’s family.

West in recent weeks had exchanged letters with one of the victim’s sons. West expressed remorse, and Will Berry offered forgiveness.

A plea from victim’s son

Will Berry urged Alabama’s governor to commute West’s sentence to life in prison. He said taking another life will not help his family.

“I forgive him and so does my dad. We don’t want him to die,” Will Berry said of West. On Tuesday he helped deliver a petition to her office asking for commutation of his sentence.

He was 11 when his mother was killed, and he said prosecutors urged the family to support a death sentence. Now a father and grandfather, Will Berry said time and his faith have given him a different perspective. He said West was a troubled young man with a drug-fueled past who made a terrible decision.

“Vengeance isn’t for the state. It’s for the Lord,” Will Berry told The Associated Press.

Berry and West asked to meet ahead of the execution, but the Alabama Department of Corrections denied the request citing security regulations forbidding visits between victims and inmates.

Ivey said in a Sept. 11 letter to Berry that she intended to let the execution go forward. She wrote that she appreciates his belief, but she said Alabama law “imposes death as punishment for the most egregious forms of murder.”

Nitrogen gas

The execution method used to put West to death involved strapping a gas mask to his face and forcing him to breathe pure nitrogen gas, thus depriving the person of the oxygen needed to stay alive.

After state lawmakers authorized nitrogen gas as an execution method in 2018, the Alabama Department of Corrections gave death row prisoners a brief window to choose between that, lethal injection or the electric chair.