A man sentenced to death in Alabama, USA, has filed a federal lawsuit against the state after the lethal injection he was given on the day of his execution failed. Alan Eugene Miller, who was convicted of murdering three people, claimed prison officials stuck him with needles and that the experience caused “physical and psychological distress”.
The failed execution of the killer came after doctors could not find the vein in the prisoner’s arms to administer the lethal injection during 18 attempts. Alan’s lawyers allege that the prison team tried to put the foot down, but also to no avail.
“Mr. Müller felt the veins being pricked into his body by needles. Nausea, disorientation, confusion and fear of being killed, blood was leaking from some of his wounds,” the prisoner’s defense attorney recounts his experience on death row’
Now, Miller’s legal team is calling for a ban on any method of execution other than nitrogen hypoxia, preferred by the convict, in which the inmate dons a mask and dies from inhaling the nitrogen from a lack of oxygen in the body.
The execution method was approved in 2018 in Alabama and two other US states, but has not yet been tested. Authorities are already trying to reschedule Miller’s sentence.
The delay in carrying out the execution is precisely due to the submission of the defendant’s defense requesting this particular type of killing and barring him from lethal injection.
In prison for more than two decades since 1999, Alan Eugen faces the death penalty for shooting three people that same year. The victims were two associates and one person who had worked with the killer years before.
* Intern at R7directed by Lucas Ferreira