Florida man who dropped appeals is executed for 1988 hammer killing of a nurse

By CURT ANDERSON
Associated Press

STARKE, Fla. (AP) — A Florida man who dropped all appeals has been executed for the 1988 murder of a woman who was sexually assaulted, killed with a hammer and then set on fire in her own bed. Sixty-one-year-old James Phillip Barnes received a lethal injection Thursday evening at a prison in Starke. Barnes was serving a life sentence for the 1997 strangulation of his wife when he wrote a prosecutor in 2005 and claimed responsibility for killing nurse Patricia “Patsy” Miller years earlier at her Melbourne condominium. Barnes represented himself in court, pleaded guilty and didn’t attempt to seek a life sentence instead of the death penalty. He recently dropped all appeals after his death warrant was signed.