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Florida Executes James Phillip Barnes, Who Dropped His Appeals, for the 1988 Murder of Nurse Patricia Miller

Already serving life for strangling his wife, Barnes confessed to the Melbourne killing in letters to a prosecutor, pleaded guilty and accepted death. He made no final statement.

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Illustration: candles in the grass along a prison fence at night

James Phillip Barnes asked for no reprieve and got none. On Thursday, August 3, 2023, Florida executed him by lethal injection at Florida State Prison in Starke for the 1988 murder of Patricia "Patsy" Miller, a nurse who was raped, beaten with a hammer and set on fire in her own bed. He was 61. He did not respond when prison officials asked whether he had a final statement, and he was pronounced dead at 6:13 p.m. It was Florida's fifth execution of the year.

Miller was 41 when she was killed on April 20, 1988, in her condominium in Melbourne, on Florida's east coast. The case went unsolved for years. Barnes was already serving a life sentence for the 1997 strangling of his wife, Linda Barnes, 44, when he wrote letters in 2005 to a state prosecutor taking responsibility for Miller's death. According to court records, Barnes killed his wife after she discovered he was dealing drugs, and her body was found stuffed in a closet.

He represented himself in the Miller case, offered no defense, pleaded guilty and did not try to seek a life sentence instead of death. When he pleaded, he told the judge that after breaking into Miller's home, "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," according to court records. DNA evidence also linked him to the killing. He was sentenced to death on December 13, 2007, and also pleaded guilty to sexual battery, arson and burglary with an assault and battery.

Lawyers appointed to represent him filed early appeals, one of which led to competency evaluations. Two doctors found symptoms of a personality disorder with "borderline antisocial and sociopathic features" but found him competent to plead guilty, and his convictions and death sentence were upheld. After Gov. Ron DeSantis signed his death warrant in June 2023, a Brevard County judge granted Barnes's request to drop all remaining appeals, noting that he wanted to accept responsibility and proceed to execution without delay. The Florida Supreme Court accepted that ruling.

In a jailhouse interview with the German filmmaker Werner Herzog, Barnes said he had converted to Islam in prison and had wanted to clear his conscience about Miller during the holy month of Ramadan. He spoke of unspecified earlier encounters with her. "There were several events that happened (with Miller). I felt terribly humiliated, that's all I can say," he said.

Andrew Miller, one of her siblings, watched the execution. "I did not come here to watch someone die. I came here to honor our sister, Patricia Miller," he told reporters afterward. "No one should live in fear within the safety of their own home."

Barnes claimed to have killed at least two other people, but he was never charged in those cases, and they are not established. His two murder convictions were for the deaths of Patricia Miller and Linda Barnes.

Sources