Alabama Death Row inmate expressed anxiety over his upcoming execution — the first since Gov. Kay Ivey put a pause on the practice following three botched lethal injections.

“I have no fear of death,” Barber, 64, said in a phone interview from the William C. Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore with NBC News in a story published Tuesday. “I have a fair amount of trepidation about the process that they obviously haven’t perfected — to be at their hands and be the first one after they didn’t do a true review of the protocol and made no real changes.”

Barber is awaiting a decision from a federal appeals court on his effort to block his execution scheduled for Thursday.

Gov. Kay Ivey established a 30-hour window for Barber’s execution to be carried out at Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore, beginning at midnight Thursday and continuing until 6 a.m. Friday. It’s the first time the state has set an execution window of longer than 24 hours, a result of a review of the state’s execution process Ivey called for after the previous issues with other condemned inmates.

The state’s review of its execution protocol came after problems arose with three previous execution attempts. Barber argues in his appeal that he has the same body mass index as one of the inmates for whom personnel struggled to establish an IV line and a higher BMI than another. Because of those previous struggles and the similarities in BMI, Barber said that should not be an option in his execution.

“I don’t know what to expect,” Barber told NBC News. “But then, I know I’m in God’s hands, so it’s not fear. It’s hard to explain.”

The Alabama Death Row inmate was convicted in Madison County for the slaying of 75-year-old Dorothy Epps. Epps was beaten to death with Barber’s fists and a claw hammer in her Harvest home, according to court records. She suffered multiple skull fractures, head lacerations, brain bleeding, and rib fractures.

Barber said he could not reconcile how Gov. Kay Ivey has anti-abortion views but believes in the death penalty.

He offered the example of the execution of Joe James. The family of James’ victim, his ex-girlfriend Faith Hall, pleaded with Ivey to halt his execution and that they forgave him.

“When it came time for Joe James’ execution, the victim’s family cried out to [Ivey] for mercy: ‘We don’t want any harm to come to him. We’ve forgiven him,’” Barber said. “And she looked at them and her own words were ‘Yeah, but I got to make an example out of him.’ What happened to ‘all life is precious’? What happened that you’re trying to get closure for the victim’s family? That’s not what she’s doing.”