Second death row inmate set to be killed by controversial execution method

Alabama is set to execute a prisoner in a controversial execution style which has only been used once before.

On Wednesday (21 February), Alabama filed a request to the Supreme Court to set a date for 59-year-old Alan Eugene Miller's execution using a method which has been highly contested.

It follows after another prisoner was executed earlier this year using the new method for the first time.

Kenneth Eugene Smith spent decades on death row in Alabama before being executed on 25 January, 2024.

Convicted of capital murder after being one of two men who attacked a woman while she was in her home - stabbing her a total of 10 times - Smith was meant to be executed back in November 2022 by lethal injection.

However, officers left unable to find a vein and with the death warrant running out at midnight, the execution had to be postponed.

Instead, Smith ended up being executed earlier this year through the use of nitrogen hypoxia - a method which until then had never been used on a human and was only authorised in Mississippi, Oklahoma and Alabama. It consists of a person breathing in nitrogen through a respirator over his nose and mouth, meaning he couldn't breathe in any oxygen.

Despite the method being heavily contested and lawyers, arguing it violated the prisoner's rights as well as the UN warning it could 'subject [prisoners] to cruel inhuman or degrading treatment or even torture,' it's set to be used again.

Police

Alan Eugene Miller is set to meet the same fate as Smith, having similarly been scheduled to die by lethal injection, but now facing death by nitrogen hypoxia.

Miller - who was sentenced to death for killing Terry Jarvis, Lee Holdbrooks and Scott Yancy in 1999 - was originally set to be executed by lethal injection on 22 September, 2022. But like Smith, officials said they couldn't get it done before the clock struck 12.

Not only this, but Miller also then filed a federal lawsuit against being executed by lethal injection, accusing prison officials of leaving him hanging vertically while tied to a gurney and having poked needles in his for longer than an hour.

Yesterday, Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall filed the state is 'prepared to carry out the execution of Miller's sentence by means of nitrogen hypoxia'.

The filing adds: "It is once more the appropriate time for the execution of his sentence."