Photo of inmate April Barber for North Carolina Department of Corrections
Earlier this month, Governor Roy Cooper commuted the sentence of 46-year-old April Barber to time served. He did so on the recommendation of the NC Juvenile Sentencing Review Board, which he created last year. The Board’s mission is to review sentences of people who were under the age of 18 when they were tried in adult criminal court. Barber was given two life sentences at age 15, has served 30 years in prison, and now she will be set free. The media jumped on this feel-good human interest story because April had earned her GED and paralegal certification while incarcerated, and is now ready to rejoin and contribute to civilized society. The only problem is that there was nothing civilized about the crimes Ms. Barber committed.
April Barber wasn’t wrongly convicted 30 years ago. She wasn’t wrongly identified. There were no extenuating circumstances. She hadn’t been held hostage and forced to commit a crime. There was no DNA mix-up, and she didn’t act out of self-defense. The fact is that April and her 30-year-old boyfriend carefully planned, and then deliberately set fire to her grandparents’ house, killing both Lillian and Aaron Barber. Why? Because April was pregnant, and, according to her testimony, April’s grandparents had threatened to have her boyfriend charged with statutory rape if she didn’t abort the baby.
OK, suppose you believe April’s story, and she was torn between aborting her baby or sending her married-man friend to jail. Even so, there were ways to deal with the problem other than burning your grandparents alive. Roy Cooper would probably contend that April was only 15 years old, and didn’t know it was wrong to pour gasoline in a house, set fire to it, and trap two elderly people inside. Bull crap, Roy! If you’re old enough to get a driver’s permit, get pregnant, and plot a double murder, then you’re old enough to know right from wrong, and you should serve your full prison sentence. But I guess Roy didn’t hear what Jack Shepherd heard on that fateful night in 1991. Shepherd, who lived next to the Barbers, told the Greensboro News and Record that, “She [April] could hear her grandmother crying and screaming in pain and hollering for her just as well as I could.” The fire had blocked all exits to the house, so there was no escape for the loving couple who had been caring for April. Aaron died in the fire and Lillian died a few days later.
Hey, I’m all for reviewing criminal cases when evidence is in dispute or when new facts come to light. I’m all for putting murderers in rehab hospitals if a jury found them to be mentally incompetent. But April Barber confessed to and was fairly convicted of two brutal murders. She was given two life sentences with a chance of parole in ten more years. So, there was absolutely no justification for Cooper commuting her sentence to time served. But, after all, Roy is a politician who may want to run for the Senate one day, so he did what was politically correct. He heard the voices who called for leniency, but in doing so, he muted the voices and screams of two innocent victims.
Cooper Mutes the Screams of Victims
Photo of inmate April Barber for North Carolina Department of Corrections
Earlier this month, Governor Roy Cooper commuted the sentence of 46-year-old April Barber to time served. He did so on the recommendation of the NC Juvenile Sentencing Review Board, which he created last year. The Board’s mission is to review sentences of people who were under the age of 18 when they were tried in adult criminal court. Barber was given two life sentences at age 15, has served 30 years in prison, and now she will be set free. The media jumped on this feel-good human interest story because April had earned her GED and paralegal certification while incarcerated, and is now ready to rejoin and contribute to civilized society. The only problem is that there was nothing civilized about the crimes Ms. Barber committed.
April Barber wasn’t wrongly convicted 30 years ago. She wasn’t wrongly identified. There were no extenuating circumstances. She hadn’t been held hostage and forced to commit a crime. There was no DNA mix-up, and she didn’t act out of self-defense. The fact is that April and her 30-year-old boyfriend carefully planned, and then deliberately set fire to her grandparents’ house, killing both Lillian and Aaron Barber. Why? Because April was pregnant, and, according to her testimony, April’s grandparents had threatened to have her boyfriend charged with statutory rape if she didn’t abort the baby.
OK, suppose you believe April’s story, and she was torn between aborting her baby or sending her married-man friend to jail. Even so, there were ways to deal with the problem other than burning your grandparents alive. Roy Cooper would probably contend that April was only 15 years old, and didn’t know it was wrong to pour gasoline in a house, set fire to it, and trap two elderly people inside. Bull crap, Roy! If you’re old enough to get a driver’s permit, get pregnant, and plot a double murder, then you’re old enough to know right from wrong, and you should serve your full prison sentence. But I guess Roy didn’t hear what Jack Shepherd heard on that fateful night in 1991. Shepherd, who lived next to the Barbers, told the Greensboro News and Record that, “She [April] could hear her grandmother crying and screaming in pain and hollering for her just as well as I could.” The fire had blocked all exits to the house, so there was no escape for the loving couple who had been caring for April. Aaron died in the fire and Lillian died a few days later.
Hey, I’m all for reviewing criminal cases when evidence is in dispute or when new facts come to light. I’m all for putting murderers in rehab hospitals if a jury found them to be mentally incompetent. But April Barber confessed to and was fairly convicted of two brutal murders. She was given two life sentences with a chance of parole in ten more years. So, there was absolutely no justification for Cooper commuting her sentence to time served. But, after all, Roy is a politician who may want to run for the Senate one day, so he did what was politically correct. He heard the voices who called for leniency, but in doing so, he muted the voices and screams of two innocent victims.