MONTGOMERY, Ala — A death row inmate in Alabama has filed a federal lawsuit after a botched execution on September 22 while the state is seeking a new date.
According to WALA, Alan Miller was supposed to be executed on September 22, for killing three people in a workplace shooting spree in 1999, but it was called off at 11:30 p.m. after Holman Prison officials could not find his veins.
Miller killed Terry Jarvie, Lee Holdbrooks and Scott Yancy, according to The Associated Press.
A federal lawsuit filed by Miller and his attorneys, which was obtained by WALA, claims that Miller was poked and probed for about 90 minutes, calling it a “botched” execution. The lawsuit also claims that Miller had chosen death by nitrogen hypoxia because of the difficulty of finding his veins.
Alabama Corrections Commissioner Jon Hamm, according to WALA, said that an execution by nitrogen hypoxia could not happen and lethal injection was the way it was going to be done. According to WALA, the U.S. Supreme Court allowed for the execution to happen.
The multiple attempts at finding Miller’s veins happened over 2 1/2 hours, according to the AP.
Miller said in the lawsuit that the staff at the prison had tortured him for repeatedly trying to access his veins, according to WALA.
According to the AP, the Alabama Attorney General’s Office last Tuesday asked the Alabama Supreme Court to set a new execution date for Miller and they did not provide a timeframe.
The AP reported that this is the third time Alabama has known that there have been problems with venous access during a lethal injection. One execution in July took three hours and another in 2018 was called off because they couldn’t find the intravenous line.
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