MONTGOMERY, Ala. — Alabama is scheduled to carry out its fourth execution of the year on Thursday, and its second using nitrogen gas.
Alan Eugene Miller, 59, who was sentenced to death for a triple homicide in 2000, is set to be executed on Thursday. Under state law, the execution can be carried out between midnight Thursday and 6 a.m. on Friday.
Miller last month dropped a lawsuit over the execution after reaching an agreement with the Alabama attorney general’s office. The details of the agreement are confidential. Miller had claimed in the lawsuit that the execution method would violate his constitutional protections against cruel and unusual punishment.
Miller was convicted of capital murder in 2000 for his role in the murders of Lee Michael Holdbrooks, Christopher S. Yancy, and Terry Lee Jarvis, coworkers who Miller believed had been spreading rumors about him. Miller’s attorneys argued that he suffers from mental illness which contributed to his actions when shooting the victims.
Miller was one of three death row inmates who underwent botched lethal injection executions in 2022. That July, Alabama executed Joe Nathan James Jr. after staff tried for two hours to establish an IV line to deliver the drugs to eventually put him to death. An autopsy following the execution stated there were multiple puncture wounds on his body, suggesting that DOC staff tried multiple times to find a vein.
The DOC tried to execute Miller in September 2022. The execution was called off after staff failed to find a vein to insert an IV line for the drugs. Miller alleged in a lawsuit that DOC staff could not connect an IV to veins in his arms, legs or neck and turned him upside down while he was strapped to the gurney, leaving him there while bleeding for 20 minutes. Miller’s execution was eventually stopped after the warrant expired.
Corrections staff called off an then failed to execute Kenneth Eugene Smith in November 2022 for a similar reason.
Smith was executed by nitrogen gas in January, the first person to be put to death by the method. Media witnesses reported that Smith struggled to breathe for several minutes before the state formally pronounced him deceased.
Death penalty opponents have roundly criticized Miller’s scheduled execution.
“This is unnecessary, we don’t need to be doing this,” said Abraham J. Bonowitz, executive director of Death Penalty Action, an organization that opposes capital punishment. “This is only the second experimental gas suffocation, and it is likely we will see, once again, significant, unnecessary suffering.”
After Smith, the state executed Jamie Ray Mills in May and Keith Edmund Gavin in July. Both were put to death by lethal injection. The state has scheduled the execution of Derrick Dearman by lethal injection in October and Carey Grayson by nitrogen gas in November.
If the remaining executions are carried out, 2024 will tie 2009 and 2011 for years where the state conducted the most executions.
