Alabama executes inmate with nitrogen gas after past lethal injection attempt failed
Category: News & Politics
Via: perrie-halpern • 2 weeks ago • 32 commentsBy: Erik Ortiz and Abigail Brooks
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Alabama executed a condemned man Thursday using nitrogen gas in only the second instance in the United States of the method's use, which drew criticism from human rights groups.
Alan Eugene Miller, a former delivery driver who was convicted in 2000 for a workplace shooting spree, was executed in the state prison in Atmore, the governor's office said.
Prison staff members put Miller, 59, to death via nitrogen hypoxia, in which a person breathes only nitrogen through a mask apparatus and is deprived of oxygen. It was also the second time Alabama moved to execute him after an execution squad struggled to do so two years ago by lethal injection.
Curtains to the death chamber were opened at 6:12 p.m. Miller said in a final statement that "I didn't do anything to be in here" and "I didn't do anything to be on death row," reported AL.com. Gas then appeared to flow into his mask at 6:16 p.m., media witnesses said.
AL.com reported that his fingers moved slightly when his spiritual adviser came to his side. Miller then pulled against his restraints, shaking and trembling for about two minutes, and periodically gasped for about six minutes, The Associated Press reported.
He was declared dead at 6:38 p.m., the state said.
His death caps a particularly busy period of executions nationwide with five occurring over the past seven days. They included Oklahoma carrying out an execution Thursday morning, South Carolina executing someone last week for the first time in 13 years and a Missouri man executed Tuesday who maintained his innocence in a case that drew national attention.
"Just as Alan Miller cowardly fled after he maliciously committed three calculated murders in 1999, he has attempted to escape justice for two decades," Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey said in a statement. "Tonight, justice was finally served for these three victims through the execution method elected by the inmate. His acts were not that of insanity, but pure evil."
Alabama in January became the first state to execute a prisoner using nitrogen; eyewitnesses reported the inmate, Kenneth Smith, 58, remained conscious for several minutes and violently thrashed and heaved while strapped to a gurney.
State Attorney General Steve Marshall has argued in court filings that the method is "swift, painless and humane."
In a statement following Miller's execution, Marshall accused political activists, out-of-state lawyers and the media of perpetrating a "misinformation campaign," and said the procedure went "as expected and without incident."
Miller initially sought to challenge the use of nitrogen. He filed a federal lawsuit in March seeking to halt his execution, citing the state's past execution failures and concerns that the method of nitrogen hypoxia would add pain and prolong death.
But Miller had opted for Alabama to use nitrogen, the state's alternative to lethal injection approved in 2018, after his execution in September 2022 was called off when staff members were unable to access a vein for more than an hour — a process Miller described as "excruciating" as two men punctured him several times in his arms and a foot. In his lawsuit, Miller said his weight, 350 pounds, has made securing an IV line "challenging."
The state agreed it would not try to execute Miller for a second time using lethal injection.
In July, Alabama officials posted unredacted documents related to Miller's suit in the federal courts' electronic filing system, shedding new light on the case before some of them were sealed.
The records, which were reviewed by NBC News, included a deposition in which Miller expressed concern that the execution team would have trouble securing a mask over his face to breathe in the nitrogen gas.
"Are these people that are going to fit [the mask], what's their training?" Miller said.
"I've got a big old head," he added. "Nothing else fits my head."
Miller had claimed the Alabama Department of Corrections refused to check whether the mask would fit him before the execution, but in his deposition, he declined an offer to have it fit-tested before the procedure.
"I think this is psychological terror right here," Miller said in his deposition.
However, the attorney general's office announced last month that Miller had agreed to settle his suit. The terms remain confidential.
"The resolution of this case confirms that Alabama's nitrogen hypoxia system is reliable and humane," Marshall said in a previous statement.
Miller's lawyers did not immediately return a request for comment.
With apparently no more legal barriers or plans by his legal team for a last-minute appeal, his execution went on as scheduled.
Miller does not contest that he was responsible for the 1999 shooting rampage south of Birmingham. Prosecutors said he fatally shot two co-workers, Lee Holdbrooks and Christopher Scott Yancy, and then went to a previous place of employment, where he confronted a former colleague, Terry Lee Jarvis, and killed him.
Testimony at his trial claimed that Miller was upset about "people starting rumors on me," according to court documents. In attempting to appeal his case following his conviction, Miller said he lacked the necessary intent to commit murder because he suffered from mental instability.
The use of nitrogen has raised concerns from human rights groups as states have looked for viable alternatives to lethal injection, a method that has become increasingly difficult to use because of a shortage of the necessary drugs.
If nitrogen, a naturally occurring, colorless and odorless gas, is not mixed with enough oxygen, it can cause physical side effects, such as impaired respiration, vomiting and death.
During an execution, medical experts say, a small amount of oxygen's getting into an inmate's mask as the inmate breathes nitrogen could lead to slow asphyxiation and prolong the time it would take to die.
The state has denied Smith's heaving was due to oxygen's leaking into the mask and argued that he held his breath, which hindered his becoming unconscious sooner.
Maya Foa, the U.S. director of Reprieve, a London-based human rights nonprofit group, said that the use of gas is akin to "human experimentation" and that studies indicate waning support for capital punishment among Americans.
"Whether by lethal injection or nitrogen suffocation, the myth of the 'humane execution' is a lie fewer and fewer people believe," Foa said in a statement.
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the last request of wearing his maga hat during the execution was denied ...
Suffocation is neither swift, painless or humane.
Put a plastic bad over your head and tell me if it's painless
Supposedly nitrogen does not trigger the gasping and such that normal strangulation does. You think you are simply breathing until you fall asleep/unconscious.
It doesn't matter who he is or what he did, if something as extreme as the death penalty is applied it should be done in a merciful manner, painless. If nitrogen does not do that, something else should be done. There are enough drugs and chemicals out there that would cause immediate and painless death.
A plastic bag over your head causes suffocation, not strangulation. Once you've used up all the O2 in the bag you are left with CO2 which is a simple asphyxiate. Not unlike nitrogen would be thru a mask
Why? The prisoner did not consider the pain and suffering of their victim.
This is capital PUNSHIMENT not capital REVENGE. It is not the government's job to show it can be as bad, or worse, than the worst of us.
So? Neither is shooting your co-workers. Did he care how much pain and suffering or how quickly his victims died? His death should have been slow and painful. The execution also took place about 20 years too late.
Maybe states need to go back to execution by firing squad. A lot cheaper and a lot quicker.
My personal favorite is the guillotine followed by burning at the stake
Yep, that would definitely be effective! 😁
Mine was strapped across the front of a cannon which is then fired. The French came up with some really good executions
That's got my vote
Morning.. would have thought that was the first option over there..
But seems people are rather squeamish when mentioning firing squads..
Works very well in other countries..
Too much blood
Hanging is pretty quick. Don't know why they just can't use common anesthetics. The lights go in an instant.
As long as the knot on the noose is properly placed on the side of the neck it does.
public hanging at site of crime for shooting up a school or event
No. I don't think so. Sounds too much like the lynchings of African Americans where people would go and have a picnic,
Not a good idea.
And the rope is reusable and cheap to replace.
naked and waist deep in lake piranha ...
a forced high dive into the alligator farm pond ...
giving the big cats some exercise and dinner in their enclosures at the zoo ...
open a few veins and then suspend the condemned shoulder deep in shark infested water ...
handcuffed to the steering wheel or in the trunk of one of these ...
How anout staked out buck naked in the desert on a bed of fire ants at high noon with honey poured on them. And let's not forget the wet rawhide leather band around the neck.
painfull, but not fast enough for PPV broadcast ...
Agreed.
i think one method that may start to being looked into is that sarco pod used in assisted suicides , instead of the control being in the hands of the individual , it will be controlled outside the pod in execution cases .
The reasoning for my thinking , no drugs or gas or any other instrument that can be boycotted except the vacuum chamber pod .
Hanging, Electrocution, Guillotine, Firing Squad, Gas Chamber
Perhaps the condemned should choose the method from a list
nah, making them spin the wheel of grisly death with a number of options would be more of a murder deterrent ...
Execution is not supposed to be torture.
Why not simply knock out the convict with anesthesia and then inject a compound to stop his heart?
how about knocking them out and then having them wake up in an unpleasant place they won't be leaving alive ...
How want we find a way to induce permanent Locked In Syndrome and let the murders spend the rest of their lives being conscious but unable to move and surround them with pictures and videos of their victims and crime scene. Let them think and relive their crime.
Totally possible today with any number of paralitics but isn''t the death penalty so doesn't qualify
People every day OD on any number of illegal drugs....daily.... $100.00 heroin,,,game over.
there's an idea, probably enough fentanyl in LE evidence lockers to take out most of the US population ...