'Justice Denied' and the Crimson Tide

A condemned man and his victim's son are seeking reconciliation as the state prepares to gas him to death. Alabama has turned them down.

Will Berry (right) is opposed to the execution of Geoffrey West for the murder of his mother, Margaret Parrish Berry (center). Photo courtesy of Will Berry

Will Berry has a message for Geoffrey West, the man convicted of murdering his mother Margaret when Berry was only 11 years old.

He wants to deliver it in person.

On Thursday, just a week before the State of Alabama is scheduled to suffocate West using nitrogen gas, Berry told Tread what that simple message would be.

“I love you,” he wants to tell West. “God loves you. My mother would love you, because we forgive you.”

He won’t get to deliver that message face-to-face. This week, in an email, a lawyer for the Alabama Department of Corrections notified West’s attorneys that they’ve denied Berry’s request to meet with West.

“As victims of Mr. West’s crime, Mr. and Mrs. Berry are not permitted to visit with Mr. West,” the email said.

West wants to meet Berry, too. He told Tread on Wednesday exactly what he’d like to look in his eyes and say.

“I’m sorry,” West wants to tell him. “I’d like to ask for his forgiveness, and I’d like to tell him the truth. I’d like to answer any questions he has.”

He won’t get the chance.

The only right that Will Berry has leading up to the scheduled execution of Geoffrey West is to witness his death inside Holman prison. The State of Alabama will let Berry watch West die. They won’t let him watch West live.

“The State shouldn’t take a man’s life. I know my mother and what she would want. She wouldn’t want this.”

Whether Berry visits West in the days before he’s put to death should be up to the two of them, not the State of Alabama, he said. Preventing the meeting is justice denied.

“It’s not their forgiveness that’s important: it’s ours,” he said. “If he agrees and I agree, why wouldn’t that be okay? If they’ll let me see him executed, why wouldn’t they let me meet him face-to-face?”

Berry doesn’t plan to watch staffers for the Alabama Department of Corrections kill West. He doesn’t believe Alabama should execute him at all.

“The State shouldn’t take a man’s life,” he told Tread. “I know my mother and what she would want. She wouldn’t want this.”

Berry said he still slept with his mother every night until her death.

“I was her baby,” he said.

On weekends, Margaret Berry often took her son along to her job at an Attalla gas station. The night of her murder, when West shot and killed her during the course of a robbery, she’d left her 11-year-old son at home because of a fever blister that had been bothering him. Margaret had told her son to call her at the store if he needed anything. He woke up in the night and dialed the familiar number.

There was no answer. His mother was dead.

What happened that night changed the course of Berry’s life. After her murder, he was largely on his own.

In the following years, as West’s trial progressed, the trauma continued. Berry said he remembers the district attorney in the case pressing him to support the death penalty.

“I was 13 when the DA got in my face and pushed the death penalty,” he said.

In that moment, the state needed Will Berry to advance its agenda. In the decades that followed, Berry said, the state was nowhere to be found.

“My whole life, I’ve never had no resources to help me,” Berry said. “And let me tell you, it’s been hard for me.”

Berry wants his mother to be remembered for the person she was—a loving and forgiving follower of Christ—not as the reason for the State of Alabama to seek revenge in her name.

“She loved unconditionally, and she taught me to do what is right,” he said. “Forgiveness is what she was.”

Ultimately, Berry said he simply wants to sit together, hand-in-hand with West and pray with him. Short of that, he wants West to know that he did everything in his power to save his life.

In the days leading up to his execution, West said his thoughts are with Berry and with his own mother, who may soon be forced to deal with her son’s execution.

“She doesn’t want to see me killed,” he said, his voice trailing. “But it’s out of our control. We’ll just have to get through it.”

Those living on Holman’s death row with West have helped him do just that. Each day, West said, at least one person has spoken with him through the door of his isolation cell, making sure he’s okay. Their solidarity means the world, West said.

Music has been another comfort for West. He says his favorite song is “A Pirate Looks At Forty,” a song by Jimmy Buffett, an Alabama native.

I've done a bit of smugglin'
And I've run my share of grass
I made enough money to buy Miami but I pissed it away so fast
Never meant to last, never meant to last

And I have been drunk now for over two weeks
I passed out and I rallied and I sprung a few leaks
But I got to stop wishin', got to go fishin'
Down to rock bottom again

If the state succeeds in its attempt to take his life, West said he wants to be remembered for who he’s become, not just for a tragic mistake he made 28 years ago. He wants to be remembered for love, not hate.

“I love the Lord. I love my family. And I love the Crimson Tide,” West said.

For Berry, the Crimson Tide means something darker. It’s the ongoing trail of blood that’s followed him now for three decades. Killing West will only be another wound he’ll have to try and heal.

“I’m going to protest it,” Berry said. “But thinking that it may still happen, it makes me sick at my stomach.”

If West is suffocated by the state, Berry said he’ll send West’s mother flowers. It’s the least he could do, he told Tread.

West has relied on his faith to keep his spirits up as his scheduled execution by nitrogen suffocation approaches. A recent convert from Baptism to Catholicism, West said he knows there’s more for him beyond this life.

Will Berry agrees.

“I hope the Lord blesses Geoff on this earth,” Berry said. “But what he don’t receive here, he’ll receive in heaven.”

He paused for a moment.

“In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen.”