ATMORE, Ala.  (AP) – Alabama officials halted the lethal injection Thursday of a man convicted of a 1999 workplace shooting because of timing concerns and problems accessing the inmate’s veins.
Alabama Corrections Commissioner John Hamm said the state halted the planned execution of Alan Miller after they determined they could not administer the lethal injection before midnight.  Corrections officials made the decision at about 11:30 p.m.  The last-minute delay came nearly three hours after a divided US Supreme Court had cleared the way for the execution to begin.
“Due to time constraints resulting from the delay in the judicial process, the execution was canceled once it was determined that the condemned inmate’s veins were not accessible according to our protocol prior to the expiration of the death warrant,” Hamm said.
Hamm said that “accessing the veins took a little longer than we expected.”  He didn’t know how long the team had been trying to make a connection, but noted that there are several procedures that need to be done before the team can begin trying to connect the IV line.
Miller returned to his regular cell at a south Alabama prison.
The aborted execution came after the state execution of Joe Nathan James in July took more than three hours to begin after the state had difficulty setting up an IV line, leading to accusations that the execution was botched.
Miller, 57, was sentenced to death after being convicted of a 1999 workplace rampage in which he killed Terry Jarvis, Lee Holdbrooks and Scott Yancey.
“Despite the circumstances that led to the cancellation of this execution, nothing will change the fact that the jury heard the evidence in this case and reached a decision,” said Alabama Governor Kay Ivey.  He added that three families are still grieving.
“We all know very well that Michael Holdbrooks, Terry Lee Jarvis and Christopher Scott Yancey did not choose to die from bullets to the chest.  Tonight, my prayers are with the families and loved ones of the victims as they are forced to continue to relive the pain of their loss,” Ivey said.
An anti-death penalty group said the situation with Miller’s attempted lethal injection sounded similar to other “botched” executions.
“It’s hard to see how they can persist with this broken method of execution that keeps going catastrophically wrong, time and time again. In its desperation to execute, Alabama is experimenting with prisoners behind closed doors — surely the definition of cruel and unusual Maya Foa, director of the Reprieve US Forensic Justice Initiative, a human rights group that opposes the death penalty, said in a statement.
Prosecutors said Miller, a delivery truck driver, killed co-workers Holdbrooks and Yancey at a business in suburban Birmingham and then left to shoot former supervisor Jarvis at a business where Miller had previously worked.  Each man was shot multiple times, and Miller was captured after a highway chase.
Testimony indicated that Miller believed the men were spreading rumors about him, including that he was gay.  A psychiatrist hired by the defense found Miller suffering from severe mental illness and delusions, but also said Miller’s condition was not bad enough to be used as the basis for an insanity defense under state law.
The justices in a 5-4 decision lifted an injunction — issued by a federal judge and upheld by the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals — that had prevented Miller’s execution from going forward.  Miller’s lawyers said the state had lost paperwork requiring his execution to be carried out using nitrogen hypoxia, a method legally available to him but never before used in the US
When Alabama approved nitrogen hypoxia as an execution method in 2018, state law gave inmates a short window to designate it as an execution method.  Miller testified that he filed documents four years ago choosing nitrogen hypoxia as his method of execution, putting the documents in a slot in his cell door at Holman Correctional Institution for a prison official to pick up.
U.S. District Judge R. Austin Huffaker Jr.  issued a preliminary injunction Tuesday preventing the state from killing Miller by any means other than nitrogen hypoxia after finding it was “substantially probable” that Miller “filed a timely election, even though the State says it has none physical form file.”
Nitrogen hypoxia is a proposed method of execution in which death will be caused by forcing the prisoner to breathe only nitrogen, depriving him of the oxygen he needs to maintain bodily functions.  Nitrogen hypoxia has been approved for executions in three states, but none have attempted to kill an inmate using the method.  Alabama officials told the judge they are working to finalize the protocol.
Many states have struggled to buy execution drugs in recent years after US and European drug companies began blocking their products from being used in lethal injections.  This has led some to look for alternative methods.