A prison inmate, who had an appointment with the Grim Reaper last month, is suing Alabama for botching up his execution.
A death row inmate from Alabama was scheduled to be killed through lethal injection on September 22, 2022. Instead of dying, he became the first and only person to survive this kind of execution.
In 2000, former delivery truck driver Alan Eugene Miller was sentenced to death for killing three people in 1999.
The 57-year-old’s execution, scheduled for September, failed as prison staff were not able to locate his veins.
At 10 p.m., Miller was brought to the chamber to start the procedure. He was strapped to the gurney at 10:15 p.m. For 90 minutes, Miller had to go through torture as he was poked and prodded with needles in his hands, arms, feet, and legs. He later shared that he felt that the two men who were in charge of the execution were just “stabbing around” and not really trying to look for a vein. At some point, another man entered the room and started slapping his neck to try to make a vein pop out somehow.
At around 11:40 p.m., an officer placed the gurney into a vertical position. Miller was there for about 20 minutes before the authorities told him that the execution was canceled that evening.
“Mr. Miller felt nauseous, disoriented, confused, and fearful about whether he was about to be killed, and was deeply disturbed by his view of state employees silently staring at him from the observation room while he was hanging vertically from the gurney. Blood was leaking from some of Mr. Miller’s wounds,” Miller’s motion stated.
Weighing 351 pounds, Miller knows about the difficulty in finding veins for someone his size. He said this was why he opted for nitrogen hypoxia when he was asked. But according to court officials, no record was found, thus, lethal injection was chosen. Because of this, Miller filed a complaint on the violation of his constitutional rights.
Despite the questions and uncertainty revolving around nitrogen hypoxia as a method of execution, more and more inmates have been choosing this over other methods since they believe that it is less painful and a more humane way to die. Three states have already approved its use.
US District Judge Austin Huffaker Jr. granted an order that Miller can only be executed through his chosen method.