Handling a Deadly Issue

She is a portly grandmother whose born-again piety has won over some of her toughest fellow inmates. She is also a convicted killer, sentenced to death row six years ago for killing her fiance with arsenic. Margie Velma Barfield, 51, a onetime private nurse, also confessed to poisoning her mother and two elderly patients in her care. When North Carolina's Democratic Governor James Hunt, who is challenging conservative Republican Jesse Helms for his Senate seat, rejected Barfield's plea for clemency last week, his decision added emotionally charged elements to an already close, tense race.

Though Hunt, like his opponent and the majority of the state, supports the death penalty, the Barfield case was painfully complex. If executed, she would be the first woman prisoner put to death in the U.S. since 1962. Barfield's claim that she murdered while addicted to prescription drugs and has since recovered her sanity and discovered God has mobilized a fervent lobby of supporters. The execution is scheduled for Nov. 2. Despite its potential impact on the election, Hunt felt he had no choice. "Death by arsenic poisoning is slow and agonizing ... I cannot in good conscience justify making an exception to the law."