Catherine Rusoff
Alabama has scheduled a date for the next execution of Alan Eugene Millera convicted murderer who, after surviving a previous execution attempt, will become the second inmate sentenced to death using nitrogen gas in the United States. Nitrogen hypoxia is a controversial method only permitted in some US states and essentially aims to asphyxiate the prisoner with an oxygen-free gas mask.
The first person executed in this way was kenneth smith, who was sentenced to death in late January, marking the state’s first use of nitrogen gas for an execution. Although nitrogen hypoxia has technically been authorized as an alternative execution method for several years in Alabama, along with Oklahoma and Mississippi, no one was actually executed with the toxic gas before Smith earlier this year.
Miller’s execution is scheduled for Sept. 26, according to a memo issued Wednesday by Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey’s office. CBS affiliate WIAT reported. Miller was convicted of murdering three men in 1999.
Ivey’s memo followed a ruling last week by the Alabama Supreme Court that authorized the execution with nitrogen gas and approved a request from the state attorney general asking that the governor be allowed to officially set the date. Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall made that request in February, writing at the time that the state “is prepared to carry out Miller’s sentence through nitrogen hypoxia” and adding, “it is once again the appropriate time to the execution of his sentence.”
Miller, 59, has been on Alabama’s death row for decades, ever since a jury found him guilty of killing three people in August 1999 and recommended in a vote that he be executed for the crimes. While working as a delivery truck driver for a company called Ferguson’s Enterprises in Pelham, Alabama, near Birmingham, authorities said Miller fatally shot two of his colleagues, Christopher Yancy and Lee Holdbrooks, in the company building. He fatally shot another man, Terry Jarvis, at another location in the same city.
Dave Martin/AP
Witnesses recalled after the fact that Miller accused the three men of “starting rumors” about him before shooting each of them multiple times, court documents show. The descriptions of the murders in these proceedings are horrific and disturbing, and the court ultimately concluded during Miller’s trial that his crimes were especially heinous.
Alabama already tried to execute Miller. His execution in 2022 was halted due to concerns about timing and problems accessing his veins.
Miller was one of at least four state death row inmates whose lethal injections were botched or stopped over the past four years. Accidents inside the execution chamber called into question Alabama’s ability to carry out executions. Amid a shortage of lethal injections made available for capital punishment, the state has turned to nitrogen hypoxia as another potential option.
Although it was not Smith’s decision to die with nitrogen gas, Miller chose this method of execution for himself and in fact fought for that choice in court. Before the failed lethal injection attempt in 2022, a federal judge issued a preliminary injunction preventing Alabama from proceeding with Miller’s execution after the inmate filed a lawsuit alleging that he had chosen nitrogen hypoxia as his preferred means of death. , but the state had lost its paperwork .
The justices, in a subsequent ruling, lifted the injunction and the state attempted to execute Miller soon after. Alabama prison officials said they had no record of any paperwork and suggested Miller was trying to delay his sentence. Death row inmates in Alabama were given a window of time to decide to die by nitrogen hypoxia after the state authorized it as a method of execution in 2018.
Critics of nitrogen hypoxia point to its potential to cause unnecessary harm to the condemned and even endanger others present in the chamber.
Before Smith’s execution with nitrogen in January, advocates in the U.S. and abroad spoke out against Alabama’s prison system for allowing the use of an untested method, with the United Nations’ top human rights official coming to the point to say that nitrogen asphyxiation “could amount to torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment under international human rights law.”
