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Alabama officials withdrew the lethal injection of a man convicted of shooting three people because of timing issues and difficulty accessing the prisoner’s veins.
Alabama Department of Corrections Commissioner John Hamm said the state had suspended plans to execute Alan Miller after it determined they could not deliver the lethal injection by the midnight deadline.
Prison officials made the decision around 11:30 p.m. Thursday.
The last-minute reprieve came nearly three hours after the divided U.S. Supreme Court cleared the way for the execution to begin.
“Due to time constraints imposed by late court proceedings, the execution was called off once it was determined that the death row inmate’s vein could not be accessed as per our protocol until the death warrant expired,” Mr Hamm said.
The firing squad began trying to establish venous access, but he didn’t know how long that lasted.
Miller was returned to his regular cell at the Southern Alabama Penitentiary.
The 57-year-old was sentenced to death for killing three people in a workplace brutality in 1999.
In a 5-4 decision, the judge struck down an injunction — issued by a federal judge and reserved by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit — that blocked enforcement against Miller.
Miller’s attorneys said the state lost paperwork to execute him using nitroxide, a method he could legally use but never used in the United States.
When Alabama approved nitrogen hypoxia as a method of execution in 2018, state law gave prisoners a brief window to designate it as their method of execution.
Miller said he turned in the paperwork four years ago, choosing nitrous oxide as the method of execution, placing the documents in a slot in the door of the Holman Correctional Institution cell for prison staff to collect.
U.S. District Judge R. Austin Huffaker Jnr issued a preliminary injunction Tuesday preventing the state from killing Miller by any means other than nitrogen anoxia, finding that Miller “is very likely” to “file a timely election form” , although the state says it has no physical records of any kind”.
Prosecutors say Miller was a delivery truck driver who killed colleagues Lee Holdbrooks and Scott Yancey at a business in suburban Birmingham before driving to a business where Miller previously worked Shots were fired at former supervisor Terry Jarvis.
Each was shot multiple times, and Miller was caught after a freeway chase.
Evidence from the trial suggested that Miller believed the men were spreading rumors about him, including that he was gay.
A psychiatrist hired by the defense found Miller was severely mentally ill, but also said his condition was not strong enough to warrant a defense of insanity under state law.
“In Alabama, we are committed to maintaining law and order and upholding justice,” Alabama Gov. Kayvey said in a statement. “Despite the circumstances that led to the cancellation of enforcement, nothing can change what the jury heard in this case. The fact that the evidence and the decision was made. This does not change the fact that Mr. Miller never contested his crime.
“This does not change the fact that the three families are still grieving.
“We are all very aware that Michael Holbrooks, Terry Lee Jarvis and Christopher Scott Yancey did not choose to die from being shot.
“Tonight, my prayers are with the victim’s family and loved ones as they are forced to continue to suffer the loss.”
Although Alabama has authorized nitrogen hypoxia as an execution method, the state has never executed anyone using the method, and the Alabama prison system has not finalized procedures for using it to carry out executions.
Nitrogen anoxia is a proposed method of execution in which death is caused by forcing prisoners to breathe only nitrogen, thereby depriving them of the oxygen they need to maintain their bodily functions.
In recent years, many states have struggled to buy execution drugs after drug companies in the U.S. and Europe began blocking the use of their products in lethal injections.
This has led some to seek alternatives.
The July execution of Joe Nathan James took more than three hours to begin after the state struggled to establish an IV line, leading to accusations of a botched execution.
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