The State of Alabama executed Alan Miller tonight. He was subjected to the execution process twice because he survived a botched execution attempt in 2022.
Once again, a person being executed in Alabama struggled and demonstrated suffering while being asphyxiated by nitrogen gas.
Alabama officials had assured the courts and the public that the person being executed by nitrogen suffocation would lose consciousness “almost immediately” and die within a few minutes.
But media witnesses reported that gas appeared to start flowing into the mask fitted onto Mr. Miller’s face at 6:16 pm. He “struggled against the restraints on the gurney, shaking and trembling for about two minutes,” according to AL.com, and then gasped for air for about six minutes.
He was not pronounced dead until 6:38 pm.
John Muench served as Mr. Miller’s spiritual advisor and was in the execution chamber as Mr. Miller gasped for air, Bolts Magazine reported. He is also a physician and he told Lauren Gill that Mr. Miller’s death looked more anguished than most of the deaths he has seen. “We don’t see people jerking around like that while they’re dying normally,” he said. “His face was twisted and he looked like he was suffering.”
Only in Alabama
Alan Miller’s case illustrates the exceptional failures of Alabama’s death penalty. Even among death penalty states, Alabama stands out for its refusal to provide adequate counsel to people facing the death penalty, its disregard for jurors’ sentencing judgments, its failure to exempt people with serious mental illness from execution, and its unprecedented record of failed and botched executions.
Alan Miller was too poor to hire a lawyer when he was charged in Shelby County with one count of capital murder for killing two co-workers and one former co-worker who he delusionally believed were spreading rumors about him.
Mr. Miller had no prior criminal record and a long and documented family history of serious mental illness. His interviews with arresting officers and medical personnel all suggested he had no awareness of his actions at the time of the crime, and even the State’s expert acknowledged there was evidence that Mr. Miller experienced a dissociative episode at the time of the shootings, according to court filings.
An expert doctor later confirmed that Mr. Miller suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder with dissociative features and was experiencing a dissociative episode when the shootings occurred.
But Mr. Miller’s appointed trial lawyer withdrew his insanity plea and presented no defense at the first phase of trial, instead telling the jury he was not “proud [to be] representing someone who the evidence is fairly convincing, I must concede to you, did what he did.” The jury returned a guilty verdict in 20 minutes.
The penalty phase began immediately after Mr. Miller was convicted on June 17, 2000. His lawyer did next to nothing to persuade the sentencer to spare Mr. Miller’s life, presenting only a few sentences of testimony from a psychiatrist who did not even look for mitigating factors to present at the penalty phase.
Even without hearing readily available evidence about the extreme abuse Mr. Miller suffered at the hands of his father, the long history of mental illness in his family, or his positive character, devoted family relationships, and good work record, the jury deliberated for three hours before delivering a non-unanimous verdict of 10 for death and 2 for life without parole. In nearly any other state, this split verdict would have barred the death penalty for Mr. Miller. (Indeed, until Florida changed its law last year, Alabama was the only state that allowed a person to be condemned to death without a unanimous jury vote.)
But after noting this was “probably the most difficult sentence that I’ve ever had to consider”—and in the absence of any additional evidence supporting a life-without-parole sentence—the trial judge condemned Mr. Miller to death.
Torturous Executions Continue
After Mr. Miller’s appeals were exhausted, the State scheduled Mr. Miller’s execution by lethal injection in September 2022.
Expressing concern about the reliability of Alabama’s recordkeeping, the federal district court and Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals stayed the execution. But on the day of the scheduled execution, the State asked the U.S. Supreme Court to allow it to proceed in an “emergency” motion that the Court granted. The State then proceeded to attempt to execute Mr. Miller.
Three hours later, however, the State announced it had been forced to halt the execution because, after repeatedly prodding Mr. Miller with an IV needle and hanging him upside-down for hours in a desperate attempt to find a vein, prison staff could not obtain IV access.
Alabama’s failed attempt to execute Mr. Miller in 2022 was its third problematic execution since it failed to execute Doyle Hamm, also by lethal injection, in 2018. Two months earlier, Alabama had botched the execution of Joe James by lethal injection. The execution team spent several hours painfully attempting to gain IV access, repeatedly inserting needles into Mr. James before they were able to find a vein.
And it was not the last. Two months after its failed attempt to execute Mr. Miller, the State of Alabama similarly tortured Kenny Smith for hours before it was forced to call off his execution.
Despite having the worst record of any state for botched executions, Alabama conducted no meaningful review of its protocols before scheduling a second execution for Kenny Smith using nitrogen suffocation, an experimental method that had never been used in an execution.
No other state in the past 75 years had made a second attempt to execute someone after a first failed execution attempt. But Alabama nonetheless proceeded to suffocate Mr. Smith to death using nitrogen gas on January 25, 2024.
Alabama officials had assured the courts and the public that Mr. Smith would lose consciousness “almost immediately” and die within a few minutes. But witnesses reported that, four minutes after the execution started, Mr. Smith began writhing in pain and his body started “thrashing against the straps” binding him to the gurney, “his whole body and head violently jerking back and forth for several minutes,” followed by “heaving and retching inside the mask.”
Mr. Smith clenched his fists and his legs shook. As Mr. Smith gasped for air, his body lifted against the restraints. Witnesses observed fluid inside of the mask. He was not declared dead until 8:25 pm.
Without addressing the obvious flaws in its protocol that led to Mr. Smith’s prolonged distress and suffering, the State of Alabama used this same method to execute Alan Miller.
While other states have authorized nitrogen suffocation as an execution method, only Alabama has suffocated a person to death using nitrogen gas.