The state of Alabama is about to execute a second prisoner with nitrogen gas, a mere month after the first execution by that method was denounced as “agonising and painful.”
The state’s Supreme Court has been urged by the attorney general to schedule the execution of Alan Eugene Miller, a man found guilty of murder, according to The Sun.
“The State of Alabama is prepared to carry out the execution of Miller’s sentence by means of nitrogen hypoxia,” the attorney general’s office stated.
Miller, 59, shot and killed Lee Holdbrooks, Scott Yancy, and Terry Jarvis in a suburban Birmingham, Alabama, area in 2000, landing him on death row.
The former truck driver killed Jarvis by going to another business after shooting Holdbrooks and Yancy in one place.
After just twenty minutes of deliberation, the jury found Miller guilty and recommended that he be executed, a decision that the judge carried out.
Miller was scheduled to be put to death in September 2022, but the intravenous line could not be attached to a vein by officials.
According to the murderer, staff members poked him with needles for more than an hour during this attempt, and they even hung him upside down as he was strapped to the gurney.
Following the execution’s failure, the state consented to Miller’s attorneys’ request that they not attempt to execute the prisoner via lethal injection once more, thus they decided to execute the man with nitrogen hypoxia.
In response, Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall called the execution technique “textbook” and told the populace that further executions utilising nitrogen gas are planned.
“As of last night, nitrogen hypoxia as a means of execution is no longer an untested method. It is a proven one,” Marshall said the morning after Smith’s execution.
However, many were not convinced by Marshall’s assurance and even a Supreme Court Justice raised concerns about the method.
“Having failed to kill Smith on its first attempt, Alabama has selected him as its ‘guinea pig’ to test a method of execution never attempted before,” wrote Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who voted against killing Smith via the controversial method.
