An Alabama inmate who was slated for death by the state said prison staff stuck him with needles for more than an hour as they tried to locate a vein when they fatally injected him in their first attempt quit, tried.
Alan Eugene Miller, 57, said in September staff struggled to find a vein to inject the deadly drug combination that would end his life and left him hanging vertically on a stretcher before officers made the decision agreed to call off the attempted execution.
Miller’s legal team detailed the botched Sept. 22 execution in a court filing. They are now trying to prevent the state from attempting a second lethal injection,
The attorneys wrote that their client was now “the only living survivor of the execution” in the country and “was subjected to the unnecessary and wanton infliction of pain that the Eighth Amendment was intended to prohibit.”
According to the file, Miller was examined by prison officials for an hour as they tried to find a vein. He was pricked with needles in his arms, legs, feet and hands.
The two men in smocks once used a cellphone flashlight to help them locate a vein.
Miller was sentenced to death around the turn of the century after being convicted of a 1999 workplace killing spree in which he killed three people – Terry Jarvis, Lee Holdbrooks and Scott Yancy.
He used to be a delivery truck driver.
Alan Eugene Miller, 57, (pictured here in 1999) was convicted in 2000 of murdering three people during a workplace shooting spree. He was scheduled to die by lethal injection on September 22, 2022
Miller’s lawyers are now trying to stop the state from killing the killer a second time
Three times in the past five years, the state of Alabama has been involved in its efforts to lethally inject a death row inmate
Alabama has requested that the state Supreme Court set a new date for Miller’s execution, arguing that the first run was canceled only because of the late hour and the state’s midnight deadline to begin the lethal injection trial.
Miller said he was led into the execution chamber at 10:00 p.m. and strapped to the stretcher a quarter later. Around 9 p.m. that night (September 22), the US Supreme Court had lifted an injunction blocking lethal injection.
Two men, Miller reports on the court filings, used needles to examine his body for over an hour.
“He could feel that they weren’t entering his veins but stabbing around his veins,” the filing says.
Miller is a 351-pound man, making it difficult for medical workers to access his veins. He had previously asked to die by nitrogen hypoxia, a recently approved method of execution that has not yet been attempted in Alabama.
A third man eventually joined the probes and began punching Miller on the neck in an apparent attempt to find a vein.
At 11:40 p.m., Miller said he was placed in a vertical position and left there for about 20 minutes before being told his execution was set for the night.
‘Mister. Feeling nauseous, disoriented, confused and afraid if he was going to be killed, Miller was deeply disturbed by his sight of state employees silently staring at him from the observation room while he hung vertically from the stretcher. Blood oozed from some of Mr. Miller’s wounds,” the filing reads.
The body of a colleague of Miller’s at Ferguson Enterprises is brought out by coroners. Miller killed three people on the morning of August 5, 1999
Miller demanded that he die from nitrogen hypoxia, a recently approved method of execution that has not yet been attempted in Alabama. Because of his weight of 351 pounds, medical professionals sometimes have a hard time locating a vein
“Despite that failed execution, the physical and mental torture it inflicted on Mr Miller, and the fact that the defendants have now botched three lethal injection executions in just four years, the defendants are relentlessly trying to execute Mr Miller again – presumably by the lethal injection. ‘ wrote Miller’s legal team, citing one execution in Alabama that was canceled and another that took three hours to begin.
“Then what, according to the defendants, is a constitutional length of time to stab someone with needles in order to kill them?”
The September incident marks at least the third time the southern state has admitted problems with vein access during a lethal injection.
It took more than three hours for Joe Nathan James’ execution to begin in July, and the state called off Doyle Hamm’s execution in 2018 after he was unable to find an IV line.
The attorney general’s office wrote: “Due to the late hour, the Alabama Department of Justice’s attempts to gain IV access have been limited. ADOC made the decision to halt its IV access efforts at around 11:30pm, resulting in the expiration of the court’s death warrant.’