Alan Eugene Miller: Alabama to use nitrogen hypoxia to execute inmate who survived lethal injection
ATMORE, ALABAMA: According to the terms of a settlement deal announced on Monday, November 28, Alabama will not seek another lethal injection date for Alan Eugene Miller, an inmate whose execution was postponed on September 22 due to difficulty establishing an intravenous connection, hence surviving the execution. The state has now agreed not to employ lethal injection as an execution technique again for Miller.
Now only nitrogen hypoxia will be used in any further attempts to execute him, the method Miller claims he had chosen during the paperwork. The procedure though legal in Alabama has not been used to execute any of the death row criminals till now in the United States. There is, however, no protocol in place in employing the use of nitrogen hypoxia at the moment, reports suggest.
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Alan Eugene Miller: Judge calls off execution of killer 'by any method other than nitrogen hypoxia'
After two straight botched attempts and an execution marked by a protracted delay when setting an IV line, Governor Kay Ivey recently directed the attorney general's office not to schedule executions until the state performs a "top-to-bottom review" of its process. Kenneth Smith just escaped the state's execution attempt on November 17, the latest death row inmate, following Miller.
Miller initially sued numerous state officials in August, arguing that their plan to execute him via lethal injection on September 22 was unlawful since he had chosen nitrogen hypoxia as his method of death. He accused the state of missing paperwork he submitted in June 2018 to choose the alternate execution method within the required 30-day timeframe. Witnesses on Holman Correctional Facility's death row revealed a wild scramble as death row convicts were given only a few days to pick how they would die, The Oklahoma reported.
US District Judge R Austin Huffaker concurred with Miller and ordered a temporary restraining order against his lethal injection execution. Following a series of challenges, the United States Supreme Court removed the stay and cleared his death by lethal injection on the day of his execution. Strapped to the death chamber gurney at Holman, as Miller alleges in the court complaint, the staff prodded and punctured his extremities with needles for more "than 90 minutes," and he couldn't be executed before the midnight deadline.
Alabama moved rapidly to seek a second opportunity to execute Miller, and Marshall filed a request with the state Supreme Court on October 4 to schedule Miller's second execution date before other death row inmates with pending execution dates. Miller as per the reports would have been the first person in US history to face a second lethal injection execution.
Only one individual in America has been executed following a failed attempt, Willie Francis, who was 18 at the time. Miller was sentenced to death in 1999 for the murder of three men in two workplace shootings in Shelby County, as per the report.