More than 30 years ago, Barbour confessed to police that he killed a 40-year-old single mother in Montgomery and helped another man rape her. Almost immediately he tried to take back the confession — he said later that he didn’t do it nor even know the woman — but it was too late.
Barbour remains on Alabama’s death row.
But now, new DNA testing points to someone else — a man who’s already in prison for an unrelated murder. Yet there is no cinematic rush to release Barbour. Instead, there is a push by prosecutors to explain away the DNA.
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The state’s latest theory — though they write that it’s not their responsibility to offer one — is laid out in court records. The state said a “likely theory” is that the single mother also had sex with Jackson, who was a neighbor and a teenage friend of her son, that same day. That was just before being raped and killed by a group of homeless men hours later.
The judge said “any reasonable jury” would doubt that a 40-year-old churchgoing woman would have consensual sex with a boy younger than her own son.
“You see, Your Honor, after being murdered the victim had sex with a teenage boy, whose sperm washed away the other sperm”