Alabama sets nitrogen-gas execution for man who survived botched 2022 effort

Alabama has scheduled its second execution of a death row prisoner using the novel technique of nitrogen gas, brushing aside objections that the procedure is a form of cruel and unusual punishment banned under the US constitution.

Barring last-minute judicial moves, Alan Miller, 59, will be put to his death on 26 September, after an execution date was set on Thursday by the state’s Republican governor Kay Ivey. Should it go ahead, the anticipated killing would be exceptional not only as only the second time that nitrogen has been used in the US, but also because Miller has already been subjected to a botched execution, which he survived.

In September 2022, he was escorted into the death chamber at Holman correctional facility in southern Alabama and put through what his lawyers said was physical and mental torture. He was strapped to the gurney for two hours while members of the execution team pierced his arms, hands and feet with needles in search of a vein through which to inject lethal drugs.

Failing to achieve a line, the team raised the gurney into the vertical position and left Miller suspended as on a crucifix for about 20 minutes, court documents show. By the time they lowered him, blood was seeping from his puncture wounds.

The state eventually called off the execution.

Miller was convicted of the 1999 murder of three men, Terry Jarvis, Lee Holdbrooks and Scott Yancy, in a workplace shooting.

Now, Alabama is set to put him through a second execution – this time using the new and highly controversial method of nitrogen gas. It involves forcing Miller to breathe pure nitrogen through an industrial mask, leading to fatal oxygen deprivation.

The state’s plan to kill Miller is a chilling repetition of what Alabama did to Kenneth Smith in January. Smith had also survived a botched execution, in November 2022, which had been called off after four hours on the gurney for want of finding a vein.

He too was then sent to the death chamber a second time, becoming the first person in the US to be executed using nitrogen. Though the state insisted the method was “perhaps the most humane method of execution ever devised”, witnesses described the prisoner writhing and convulsing for several minutes and his body shaking violently.

Smith was killed after an 11th-hour appeal for a stay of execution was denied by the US supreme court. Dissenting, Justice Sonia Sotomayor accused Alabama of using the prisoner as a guinea pig for nitrogen, adding: “The world is watching.”

In September the world will be watching again when the state attempts another repeat execution of a prisoner using nitrogen gas. The technique has been rejected for ethical reasons by veterinarians in the US and across Europe for use in the euthanasia of most animals.