Montgomery, Alabama (AP) — Will Berry was 11 when his mother was killed. Thirty-three-year-old Margaret Parrish Berry was shot in the back of the head during a robbery at the gas station where she worked.
Geoffrey Todd West was 21 when he pulled the trigger, a decision he says he wishes each day that he could take back.
Berry and West exchanged letters ahead of West’s scheduled execution by nitrogen gas Thursday in Alabama. West expressed his remorse, and Berry offered forgiveness.
Berry is asking Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey to stop the execution, saying he doesn’t want anyone else to die.
“I forgive this guy, and I don’t want him to die,” Berry said in a telephone interview. “I don’t want the state to take revenge in my name or my family’s name for my mother.”
Berry on Tuesday joined death penalty opponents in delivering a petition to the governor’s office requesting she halt the execution.
“There shouldn’t be any more death. There should be healing and moving forward,” Berry said.
He added that his mother taught him the importance of forgiveness. “Vengeance isn’t for the state. It’s for the Lord,” he said
Family members of murder victims have varied views on the death penalty. Many have sharply criticized the decades it can take for an execution to occur or the legal and media focus on the subject’s potential suffering. But some have spoken out against the death penalty, including Berry and in another Alabama case when family members of a domestic violence victim unsuccessfully urged the governor in 2022 to let the man serve life in prison instead.
Margaret Berry, the mother of two sons, was shot while lying on the floor behind the counter at Harold’s Chevron in Etowah County on March 28, 1997.
Prosecutors said the store clerk was killed to ensure there was no witness left behind. 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 — a recommendation accepted by the judge.
Etowah County Circuit Judge William Cardwell said at sentencing in 1999 that it was difficult to impose the death penalty on a young man but said the shooting death was “clearly deliberate and intentional, carried out execution style.”
West doesn’t deny he killed Margaret Berry. He and his girlfriend were desperate for cash and went to the store where he once worked to rob it. He said at 50 he struggles to understand what he did at 21.
“There’s not a day that goes by that I don’t regret it and wish that I could take that back,” West said in a telephone call from prison.
He said he frequently replays the day in his head, wishing he could make himself turn and walk away.
“I wish I had the opportunity just to swap places and let it be me and not her,” he said.
The prison system denied Berry and West’s request to meet in person, citing security regulations.
Alabama last year became the first state to carry out an execution with nitrogen. The method involves strapping a gas mask to the face and forcing the inmate to breathe pure nitrogen gas, thus depriving them of the oxygen needed to stay alive.
Berry wrote in his letter to Ivey that executing West would “weigh heavily on me, and it would not bring my mother back.”
Ivey replied in a Sept. 11 letter to Berry that she appreciated his belief, but she said Alabama law “imposes a death sentence for the most egregious form of murder.” She added that it is her duty to carry out the law.
Ivey has commuted one death sentence. The Republican governor said she did so only because of questions about the person’s guilt.
A spokesperson for Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall’s office said in a statement that West has “been on death row for twenty-six years, and his sentence is due.” The office noted the brutality of the killing.
“She gave West the cash on hand, and he executed her,” the statement read.
Berry said his mother’s death derailed his life in many ways. He credits his wife Courtney and his church for getting him through.
West said he wants other young people in desperate situations to know they have a choice to walk away.
“If you don’t have nowhere else to go, go to church, find a priest, and just tell them everything. But just don’t do what I did, man,” he said. “You’ve got an option, even if you don’t feel like you’ve got an option.”
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