The 5-4 ruling overturned rulings by the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and a federal judge that the lethal injection could not go forward after Alan Miller’s lawyers said the state had lost its paperwork in requesting his execution be carried out using hypoxia nitrogen, a method legally. available to him, but never before used in the US Miller, 57, was convicted of killing three people in a workplace rampage in 1999, carrying the death penalty. A judge blocked the state’s execution plan earlier this week. Miller testified that he had produced paperwork four years ago choosing nitrogen hypoxia as the method of execution, placing it in a slot in his cell door at Holman Correctional Institution for a prison official to collect. On Tuesday, U.S. District Judge R. Austin Huffaker Jr. issued a preliminary injunction preventing the state from killing Miller by any means other than nitrogen hypoxia after finding that it was “substantially probable” that Miller “filed a timely election, even though the state says it has no physical record form.” The Supreme Court’s ruling Thursday night overturned that order at the state’s request. Judges lifted the stay at about 9 p.m. giving the state a three-hour window to begin the execution before the death warrant expires at midnight. The execution of Joe Nathan James in July took more than three hours to begin after the state had difficulty setting up an IV line. Although Alabama has approved nitrogen hypoxia as an execution method, it has never executed anyone by this method, and the state prison system has not completed procedures for its use in carrying out the death penalty. Nitrogen hypoxia is a proposed method of execution in which death would be caused by forcing the prisoner to breathe only nitrogen, thus depriving him of the oxygen he needs to maintain bodily functions. It is approved as an execution method in three states, but no state has attempted to execute an inmate with the untested 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. 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 chose nitrogen when the form was distributed on death row because he did not like needles. “Just because the state is not yet ready to execute anyone by hypoxia does not mean it will harm the state or the public to honor Miller’s timely election of hypoxia. Instead, if an injunction is not issued, Miller will be irrevocably deprived of his choice of how to die — a choice given to him by the Alabama Legislature,” Huffaker wrote. Miller had visits from family members and a lawyer Thursday as he waited to see if his execution would go forward. He was given a food tray that included a loaf of bread, chuck wagon steak, spaghetti and French fries, the prison system said. Prosecutors said Miller, a delivery truck driver, killed co-workers Lee Holdbrooks and Scott Yancey at a business in suburban Birmingham and then left to shoot former supervisor Terry 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 that Miller suffered from a serious mental illness, but also said that Miller’s condition was not bad enough to be used as the basis for an insanity defense under state law.
This story has been corrected to show that Alabama’s last execution was in July.
