By Brendan O'Brien

Alabama executed a man early on Friday for beating an elderly woman to death two decades ago, the state's first execution since Governor Kay Ivey lifted a suspension on capital punishment in February following a review.

James Barber, 64, was put to death by lethal injection at 1:56 a.m. U.S. central time (0656 GMT) at the William Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore, Alabama, the governor's office said in an emailed statement.

Barber was convicted and sentenced to death for killing 75-year-old Dorothy Epps during a robbery in her home in Harvest, Alabama on the night of May 20, 2001.

The execution went ahead after the U.S. Supreme Court declined to intervene at the last moment.

Ivey suspended capital punishment in November and ordered the review of the lethal injection process in her state after a string of botched executions last year. In the third failed execution, officials were unable to set the intravenous line in the condemned prisoner before the death warrant expired.

The Republican governor lifted the suspension after the Department of Corrections added medical professionals, obtained new equipment and conducted rehearsals for executions. The state also expanded the time allowed for an execution to be carried out before the expiration of the warrant.

Barber argued to the United States Court of Appeals that his execution should be halted because he is at substantial risk of serious harm and "torture" under current protocols. The court denied that appeal on Wednesday.

Legal and ethical questions have swirled around capital punishment in the United States after several lethal injections have been botched in recent years. State governments and the federal government have also struggled to obtain the necessary drugs.

The number of executions in the United States has drastically fallen since 1999, when a record 98 executions were carried out. Capital punishment was reinstated in the United States in 1976.

Over the last five years, a total of 78 death row inmates have been executed, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

(Reporting by Brendan O'Brien in Chicago; Additional reporting by Daniel Trotta, Gursimran Kaur and Bharat Govind Gautam; Editing by Sandra Maler and Andrew Heavens)