Warrant: Background on James Barnes's Case
Today, Gov. DeSantis signed a death warrant scheduling the execution of James Barnes for August 3, 2023, at 6:00 p.m. This post explains the background of Barnes's case.
Earlier today, Gov. DeSantis signed a death warrant scheduling the execution of James Barnes for August 3, 2023, at 6:00 p.m. (More on the warrant here.)
Barnes turned 61 in March.
The Crimes and Conviction
James Barnes was sentenced to death in December 2007 for crimes that occurred in Brevard County, Florida, in April 1988. The Florida Supreme Court, in its decision on Barnes’s direct appeal in 2010, explained the crimes as follows “based upon Barnes' written and taped statements, and as shown in the forensic evidence presented during the penalty phase”:1
On the night of April 20, 1988, Barnes went to Patricia “Patsy” Miller's condominium unit, located at the River Oaks Condominiums in Melbourne, Brevard County, Florida. He did not know Ms. Miller, although he may have encountered her before at the condominium complex, where he knew several of the residents, or at Satellite Beach. Once he arrived at Miller's condominium, he took off all his clothes in order not to leave evidence and obtained entry by removing a screen and entering through a bedroom window. Barnes admitted that he went there with the intent to both rape and kill Miller. Once inside, he armed himself with a knife from the kitchen. After surreptitiously watching Miller go about her normal activities for a short period of time, he confronted her in the bathroom and forced her at knife-point to the bedroom where he sexually battered her. He then bound her hands behind her back with shoelaces that he had removed from some tennis shoes, tied her feet together, and sexually battered her again. Barnes admitted that he tried to strangle her to death with a belt which he had removed from her terrycloth robe but was not successful, so he then bludgeoned the back of her head with a hammer that he found in her bedroom.
Barnes confessed that he took a bank card from her wallet but could not later make it work at an ATM. He also collected everything he touched in Miller's residence, as well as the clothing Miller was wearing, and placed them in a bag. Barnes then set fire to the bed where Miller's body lay in order to eliminate forensic evidence left there. Before leaving in his car, Barnes took all the items that he had bagged, as well as the window screen that he had removed, and left to dispose of the items at another location.
Barnes was not charged for the crimes until 2005, as the Florida Supreme Court explained:
Although Barnes was a suspect at the time of the . . . murder, he was not charged until after he wrote several letters to an assistant state attorney in 2005 and confessed in a recorded interview, which Barnes arranged and in which he was questioned by another inmate about the . . . murder. Even though DNA testing performed in 1997 linked him to the crimes committed against [Patricia “Patsy”] Miller, Barnes was not indicted until April 18, 2006.2
When he was indicted, “Barnes was already serving a life sentence for the first-degree murder of his wife, Linda Barnes, which occurred in 1997.”
Shortly after he was indicted, Barnes “filed a pro se request for speedy trial and asserted a waiver of counsel.” He proceeded to “represent[] himself throughout the proceedings.” On May 2, 2006, at the age of 44, “Barnes entered an open plea of guilty and waived a sentencing jury.”
Sentencing
In January 2007, the State presented evidence against Barnes related to aggravation. In part, the State presented the testimony of Assistant State Attorney Michael Hunt, who testified “concerning the series of letters that Barnes wrote to him about the Miller murder.”3 A letter that Barnes wrote to Hunt on October 10, 2005, “was read into evidence, in which Barnes said that inmate Sherman Insco had persuaded him, as a converted Muslim, to confess to the unsolved crime during Ramadan. In the letter, Barnes offered to give a videotaped interview but only if the interview was conducted by Sherman Insco,” a fellow inmate. Barnes later gave the videotaped interview on November 1, 2005, which was conducted by Insco. That video “was played for the court as part of the State's presentation of aggravating factors.”
“Barnes refused to present any evidence of mitigation and announced that he would rely only on the fact that he came forward and took responsibility for the murder.” Over his objection, the trial court “appointed special mitigation counsel to investigate and present any other mitigation” at a hearing on November 16, 2007.
On December 13, 2007, the trial court entered an order sentencing Barnes to death for the murder of Patsy Miller. The trial court found six aggravating factors and assigned them each the noted weight:
(1) the murder was committed by one under sentence of imprisonment (great weight); (2) Barnes was previously convicted of another capital felony or felony involving use or threat of violence (murder of his wife in 1997) (great weight); (3) the murder was committed while Barnes was engaged in commission of a sexual battery and burglary (great weight); (4) the murder was committed for the purpose of avoiding or preventing a lawful arrest (great weight); (5) the murder was especially heinous, atrocious or cruel (great weight); and (6) the murder was cold, calculated and premeditated (great weight).
The trial court found one statutory mitigating circumstance—”that Barnes was under the influence of extreme mental or emotional disturbance,” assigned “slight weight”—and nine nonstatutory mitigating circumstances, which were assigned the noted weight:
(1) Barnes came forward and revealed his involvement in the unsolved crime (little weight); (2) he took responsibility for his acts (little weight); (3) he was under the influence of a mental or emotional disturbance (duplicating statutory mitigator and given little weight); (4) he has experienced prolonged drug use (little weight); (5) he did not have the benefit of a loving relationship with his mother (little weight); (6) he did not have the benefit of a loving relationship with his father (little weight): (7) he was sexually abused as a child (slight weight); (8) he has taken steps to improve himself (little weight); and (9) he is a functional and capable person and has demonstrated by his action and participation in this case that he has sufficient intelligence and capabilities to contribute to society (little weight).
Direct Appeal
On direct appeal, “Barnes raise[d] two issues on appeal-whether the trial court violated Barnes' Sixth Amendment right to represent himself when it appointed special court counsel to develop penalty-phase mitigation and whether the court reversibly erred in considering a presentence investigation report over Barnes' objection that it contravened his constitutional right to confront witnesses against him.”4 The Florida Supreme Court denied relief on both claims.
In addition, “the Court ha[d] a mandatory duty to examine the . . . knowing, intelligent, and voluntary nature of Barnes' plea, and to determine whether the death sentence is proportionate.”
NOTE: Florida recently eliminated its proportionality review in death cases.
The Court concluded:
After a review of the issues raised by Barnes and after our independent review of the sufficiency of the evidence, the knowing, intelligent, and voluntary nature of Barnes' plea, and the proportionality of his sentence, we affirm Barnes' conviction for first-degree murder, as well as his other convictions, and we affirm the sentence of death.
Barnes’ sentence of death became final on October 4, 2010, when the U.S. Supreme Court denied Barnes’ petition for writ of certiorari.
Initial Postconviction
On September 21, 2011, Barnes filed an initial motion for postconviction relief, “raising two claims, both of which were summarily denied: (1) whether his standby counsel or the trial court sua sponte should have ordered a competency hearing before allowing him to plead guilty, and (2) whether he may be insane at the time of execution.”5
The trial court determined that Barnes’s claims did “not require an evidentiary hearing, and should be summarily denied.”
As to the first claim, the Florida Supreme Court affirmed the trial court’s denial in a decision dated June 27, 2013. As to the second claim, the Florida Supreme Court held that the claim was not ripe for consideration because Barnes did not have an active death warrant. In other words, a death-row prisoner cannot raise and litigate a claim that he or she is insane to be executed under Rule 3.811 until there is an active death warrant scheduling their execution. (Background on the Rule 3.811 process can be found here. The history of Rule 3.811 can be found here.)
Federal Habeas Claim
In October 2013, Barnes filed his initial federal petition for writ of habeas corpus, raising four claims:
(1) a claim that his Sixth Amendment right to self-representation was violated by the trial court's appointment of special counsel to investigate and present mitigation evidence during the penalty phase of his trial, (2) a Confrontation Clause claim arising from the trial court's allegedly erroneous admission of hearsay evidence, (3) an ineffective assistance of counsel claim based on standby counsel's failure to request a competency hearing prior to the entry of Petitioner's guilty plea, and (4) a claim that Petitioner may be incompetent by the time of his execution, such that his execution would violate the Eighth Amendment.
The U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida denied the petition on February 8, 2016. The court granted Barnes a certificate of appealability on the first claim—“as to [the court’s] ruling that the state trial court's appointment of special counsel to present mitigation evidence did not violate Petitioner's Sixth Amendment right to self-representation” under U.S. Supreme Court caselaw.6
On appeal, in a decision dated April 25, 2018, the U.S. Court of Appeals to the Eleventh Circuit denied relief. On January 22, 2019, the U.S. Supreme Court denied Barnes’s petition for writ of certiorari.
The First Warrant for Post-Ring Sentence Since Hurst
Barnes is the first person since the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2016 decision in Hurst v. Florida to receive a death warrant for a sentence of death that became final after the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Ring v. Arizona.
NOTE: All sentences of death that became final before Ring were denied retroactive application of Hurst. Cases that became final after Ring were entitled to retroactive application of Hurst. For more on this, see the TFDP five-part series on Hurst here.
Everyone who has been executed in the State of Florida since Hurst had sentences of death that became final before Ring and, therefore, were ineligible for Hurst relief.
That being said, even though Hurst applied retroactively to his case, Barnes would not have been eligible for Hurst relief because he waived the right to a sentencing jury.
Additional Information
While on death row, Barnes was interviewed for an episode of “On Death Row,” which is available on peacock. His twin sister said in her interview on the show that Barnes was “always in and out of jail” throughout his life, which is consistent with information the DOC has on Barnes’s profile. She also said that that their childhood was “very horrific.”
TFDP’s Prior Coverage of the Barnes Warrant
Warrant issued June 22, 2023 covered here
My thoughts are with everyone involved in the warrant and execution process.
Barnes v. State, 29 So. 3d 1010, 1015 (Fla. 2010).
Id. at 1013.
Id. at 1018.
Id. at 1014.
Barnes v. State, 124 So. 3d 904, 909 (Fla. 2013).
Barnes v. Sec’y, Fla. Dep’t of Corrs., 888 F.3d 1148, 1150 (11th Cir. 2018).