Ivana Stara, a journalist from Alabama (Instagram photo)
Ivana Stara, a video news producer for the website AL.com, claims that the guards in charge at an Alabama prison told her that the outfit she was wearing was “inappropriate” and “too revealing,” and as a result she was forbidden to join other journalists in watching the fatal injection of the convicted murderer. The killer is, by the way, Joe Nathan James, 49, who was executed after being convicted of murdering his ex-girlfriend in 1994.
The event took place last Thursday. On Friday, the reporter tweeted in the southern US state that she ended up having to borrow rain pants from a man filming. Her media company is now filing an “official complaint,” she said.
“I have worn this skirt to previous executions without incident, to work, to professional events, and more, and I believe it is more than appropriate,” Stara wrote Thursday evening. Stara told The Post that the item is a black A-line skirt by the brand Philosophy. The skirt was about 1.5 inches above the knee.
She insisted the outfit might be showing too much skin because she’s tall and leggy: “I tried to pull my skirt up to my hips to make the skirt longer but I was told it still didn’t fit,” she added.
More in-
To complete the task, the journalist as mentioned borrowed rain pants from a cameraman and then slipped them under her skirt – then she was told that her open heels were also inappropriate, according to her. “I was told that my shoes are also too revealing… and I need to change shoes,” she said.
So she grabbed a pair of tennis shoes from her car and was eventually able to attend the execution – but later said she was treated unfairly: “It was an uncomfortable situation and I felt embarrassed that my body and my clothes were being interrogated in front of a room full of people I’d mostly never met,” she wrote. “I sat, tried to stop blushing and did my job.”
On Friday evening, she told The Post that the company she works for, Alabama Media Group, plans to file a formal complaint with the Alabama Department of Corrections.
“There has never been, at least in the last decade that my co-workers and I have covered executions in Alabama, a dress code that has been disclosed to journalists or enforced,” she said.
The Alabama prison did not respond to The New York Post’s request, but corrections departments in other states have implemented visitor dress codes banning revealing clothing to avoid provoking reactions from starving male inmates, and to “maintain a positive environment for all inmates and visitors.”
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