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Amanda Lee Myers, USA TODAYSeptember 23, 2025 at 5:03 AM
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Texas and Alabama are poised to execute death row inmates within minutes of each other on the same day this week.
On Thursday, Sept. 25, Alabama is set to execute Geoffrey West, 50, by the relatively new method of nitrogen gas. He was convicted of the 1997 murder of Margaret Parrish Berry, a mother of two killed during the robbery of the gas station where she worked.
At about the same time, coincidentally, Texas is set to execute Blaine Milam, 35, by lethal injection for the 2008 death of his girlfriend's 13-month-old baby, who was killed during what Milam and her mother described as an "exorcism." Milam was interviewed by German filmmaker Werner Herzog for a 2013 series called "On Death Row."
Both executions are scheduled for 6 p.m. CT. If they move foward as expected, the number of executions in the U.S. so far this year will reach 33, the most annually since 2014. It's also the fifth time this year executions have been held on the same day.
As their time runs out, USA TODAY is looking at each inmate's case and who their victims were.
Son of Geoffrey West's victim: 'I don't want revenge'
Will Berry was 11 years old when Geoffrey West shot his mother, 33-year-old Margaret Parrish Berry, execution-style in the back of the head as she lay on the floor during a robbery that netted $250, court documents say. But Berry doesn't want Alabama to execute West, who was 21 at the time of the crime, Berry wrote last week in an opinion piece published in the Montgomery Advertiser, part of the USA TODAY Network.
"That won't bring my mother back," he wrote. "I believe that in seeking to execute Mr. West, the state of Alabama is playing God. I don't want anyone to exact revenge in my name, nor in my mother's."
Margaret "Maggie" Berry embraces her sons Andrew (left) and Will (right) in this photo taken after Berry earned her GED. Berry was killed in a robbery of convenience store where she worked in 1997. Geoffrey West, convicted of her murder, is scheduled to be executed by nitrogen gas on Sept. 25.
Margaret Berry, who was a mother of two sons, had only been working at the gas station for a few days when West robbed it along with his 17-year-old girlfriend, according to an archived story in the Birmingham News.
Berry continued to say that he believes a sentence of life without parole is just punishment. "I believe there is an ending to this story where Mr. West and I find comfort in each other and in the healing power of forgiveness," he wrote.
Berry also expressed frustration that the Alabama Attorney General's Office didn't notify him that they had asked for an execution date to be set and that no one from Gov. Kay Ivey's office let him know when it was scheduled. He added that he wants the execution commuted or at least delayed so that he can meet with West and speak to him "heart to heart."
"I want to tell him I forgive him, that my mother forgives him, and that God loves him," he wrote. "My life has been very hard. I hope that Gov. Ivey will see her way to granting me this measure of comfort, and I pray that she will find it in herself to spare Mr. West's life.
The governor's office has not responded to USA TODAY's request for comment.
Geoffrey Todd West is pictured in prison.Blaine Milam: 'I didn't kill my little girl'
On Dec. 2, 2008, an 18-year-old Blaine Milam called 911 to report that he had just found his daughter dead in his trailer home just outside of Tatum, a small rural town in East Texas near the Louisiana state line. (Milam was not her father but was her mother's fiancé.)
When investigators arrived, they found the brutalized body of 13-month old Amora Bain Carson, whose injuries included 24 bite marks, 18 broken ribs, extensive skull fracturing, cuts and brusies from head to toe, a liver tear and extensive injuries to the genitals, according to court records.
"It's the worse thing I've seen in 30 years of law enforcement," Lt. Reynold Humber of the Polk County Sheriff's Office told the Longview News-Journal in 2008.
Milam and Amora's mother, then-18-year-old Jesseca Carson, initially told investigators that they had left the girl alone for about an hour and came back to find her dead. As investigators pressed them in separate interviews, they eventually said that Amora had become possessed by demons and needed an exorcism. Their stories later varied as to who killed her.
Blaine Milam is pictured in prison.
Carson was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole, and Milam got the death penalty. At the time he was the youngest person on death row in the U.S.
In a 2013 documentary in which he was interviewed by filmmaker Werner Herzog, Milam said that Amora "was a great little girl" whose first word was "Daddy," in reference to Milam.
"I didn't kill my little girl," he said in the interview. "I wish I could go back and stop her but I can't. I don't understand how it got this far but it did."
Milam's attorneys have been fighting for access to all the DNA testing conducted in the case and filed a lawsuit alleging that the state's postconviction relief procedures "have operated in this case to deprive Milam of his life and liberty interests without due process."
They also are arguing that Milam had an unfair trial trial because of unreliable bitemark evidence and that he is intellectually disabled and not eligible for execution. The U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals has rejected his arguments.
Milam's execution has previously been scheduled twice but it was stayed both times on appeal.
When is the next execution?
Nine more executions are scheduled in eight states by the end of the year after West's and Milam's, putting the U.S. on pace to put at least 42 inmates to death, a number that hasn't been seen since 2012. (There were 25 executions in the U.S. last year, while the all-time high number is 98 executions in 1999.)
The next execution is set for Sept. 30, when Florida is set to lethally inject Victor Tony Jones for the 1990 stabbing murders of Matilda and Jacob Nestor during a robbery.
It will be Florida's 13th execution of the year, a record being driven by Gov. Ron DeSantis signing more death warrants than ever before. Previously, the most executions Florida carried out in a single year was eight.
October will be a particularly busy month for executions, with seven scheduled. Five of them will be carried out in one four-day period alone in the following states: Florida, Mississippi, Missouri, Texas and Arizona.
Among the most notable is the Oct. 16 execution in Texas of Robert Roberson, who won a rare stay of execution last year after a bipartisan fight to spare his life over serious questions about his guilt.
Amanda Lee Myers is a senior crime reporter who covers executions for USA TODAY. Follow her on X at @amandaleeusat.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Double execution: Texas, Alabama to execute men at same time this week
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