Barbaric Alabama Authorities Botched their Murder of Alan Miller, Stopped Execution after Spending Too Long Trying to Find a Vein for Lethal injection. Unclear If He Was Tortured in the Process
From [HERE] Alabama authorities had to halt their attempt to murder a death row inmate Thursday after failing to find a vein which they could use to successfully inject the fatal cocktail.
The state began attempting to kill Alan Miller, 57, about three hours after the U.S. Supreme Court made a divided decision that he could be killed by lethal injection. Miller, who was convicted of three counts of murder in 1999, requested to be killed by nitrogen hypoxia (essentially suffocation) because he’s scared of needles. After the state said they weren't ready to use the untested method, a federal judge issued a halt in the execution order. The Supreme court reversed it in a 5-4 decision, ruling the state could kill Miller by lethal injection.
But the state called off Miller’s execution shortly before midnight because officials failed to find a vein they could use to kill Miller. According to the Guardian, Alabama Corrections Commissioner John Hamm said simply “accessing the veins was taking a little bit longer than we anticipated''.
It hasn’t been reported what Miller experienced during the botched killing but failed executions are often grisly affairs.
The failed execution is just the latest in a series of high-profile botched executions in Alabama. In August, the longest execution in recorded American history took place when Alabama officials, trying to find an IV line, failed to kill Joe Nathan James Jr for three and a half hours. Maya Foa, the director of Reprieve U.S. which reviewed the execution, called the killing the “ the definition of cruel and unusual punishment.”
In 2018, Alabama’s attempt to kill Doyle Hamm, 61, had to be called off in a similar fashion to Miller’s after they took two and a half hours to find a vein. The execution was described as “gory” as the executioners caused Hamm to bleed so much that it leaked through his clothes and the pad he was sitting on. When it was finally called off Hamm collapsed and afterward, some described the execution attempt as “torture.” Hamm died in 2021 of lymphatic cancer. [MORE]