Alabama prosecutors want one execution date for death row inmate Jamie Mills, who will receive a lethal injection, according to a motion filed with the state High Council.
The decision comes amid public outrage over the recent nitrogen gassing of Kenneth Smith, which lasted a whopping 22 minutes. However, Mills will face a more common method of execution.
Mills, 39, was convicted of murdering Floyd Hill and Vera Hill in 2007 and has been on death row since.
The victims, Floyd, 87, and Vera, 72, who was diabetic and in poor health, were brutally murdered by Mills with a machete, tire tool and ballpoint hammer in their Guin, Alabama home.
After the murder of the elderly couple, Mills and his wife, JoAnn, ransacked their home, taking a padlocked tackle box, Vera’s purse, the phone and a police scanner and stealing $140 in cash.
Alabama prosecutors want an execution date for death row inmate Jamie Mills, who will receive a lethal injection, according to a motion filed with the state Supreme Court
Mills, 39, was convicted in 2007 of three counts of capital murder for the killings of Floyd Hill and Vera Hill and has been on death row since.
JoAnn testified in court in 2007 that she and Jamie smoked methamphetamine in their home all night before going to the couple’s home to rob them.
According to court documents, the Hills allowed Jamie and JoAnn into their home, where Jamie attempted to make several phone calls while JoAnn talked to the Hills.
While JoAnn was talking to Vera on the porch, she heard a loud noise and saw a silhouette through the plastic siding of the building.
In her testimony, JoAnn described seeing Jamie with something over his shoulder, “with both hands, like he was waving something.”
JoAnn and Vera then went into the barn to see what had happened. She saw Floyd lying on the ground and Jamie hitting Vera in the back of the head with a hammer.
JoAnn further stated that she stood in the corner of the building with her eyes closed as she listened to the sound of Jamie Mills repeatedly punching Floyd and Vera, according to court documents.
She said she heard the sound of Jamie’s feet shuffling on the ground as he walked back and forth between the two victims.
The decision comes amid public outrage over the recent nitrogen gassing of Kenneth Smith, which lasted a whopping 22 minutes.
After the sounds of Jamie storming the hills stopped, Jamie handed JoAnn a hammer, a tire tool, and a machete and placed a white towel over Floyd’s head to silence the gurgling sounds coming from him.
The two went through the elderly couple’s home and took a padlocked tackle box, Vera’s bag, the phone and the police scanner before leaving the home.
That evening, Jamie and JoAnn went to Jamie’s father’s home in Hamilton, Alabama, to play dominoes.
The next day, the couple returned to their home and collected the machete, hammer, tire tools and other belongings taken from the Hills, but they were stopped by officers and arrested as they went to dispose of the items.
Jamie was sentenced to death in 2007 and JoAnn was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole after pleading guilty to murder.
The death penalty order comes as Kenneth Eugene Smith was executed using a previously unused and untested method: nitrogen gas.
Smith shook, writhed and thumped up and down on the gurney for two minutes after the nitrogen gas began filling his mask, which was followed by five to seven minutes of heavy breathing and light panting.
In all, Smith, 58, was visibly conscious and struggled in apparent pain for almost ten minutes before his breathing appeared to slowly stop at 8:08 p.m. The viewing curtains closed at 8:15 p.m. and he was pronounced dead at 8:25 p.m.
State officials had produced document after document convincing the public and the courts that asphyxiating Smith via nitrogen gas would be quick and painless.
But the reality seemed very different.
His wife cried in the viewing room and a corrections officer had to peek at his dying face to see if he still looked alive.
In previous trials, lawyers expected him to lose consciousness seconds after the gas started flowing – but witnesses said this was far from the case.
And despite promises that the mask would be airtight to prevent additional oxygen from entering and prolonging the pain, witnesses said they could hear gas coming from the mask during his final moments.
Smith was 22 years old (seen in his original 1989 mugshot) when he was first arrested for the murder of Elizabeth Sennett in 1988. His conviction was overturned before he was sentenced to death for the same murder at a separate trial in 1996
Jeff Hood, Smith’s spiritual advisor before his execution, described the untested execution method as a “horror show,” adding: “Incredible evil was unleashed in Alabama tonight”
The mask – described as one a firefighter would use – was never placed on Smith’s face until the moment he was strapped to the stretcher.
Smith then also had to say his last words through the gas mask before the 100 percent nitrogen was blown through the wire.
His last words were, “Tonight, Alabama is making humanity take a step back. I leave with love, peace and light. Thank you for supporting me. Love you all.’
Questions have now been raised as to why the execution took longer than necessary and why Smith appeared to have suffered as a result.
Smith was a ‘guinea pig’ to test an execution method that had never been tried before.
Judge Sonia Sotomayor said he was reckless considering Smith’s first attempt at the death penalty also failed in 2022 when IV administrators could not find a vein for his lethal injection.
While some have pointed out that the mask did not fit properly on Thursday, proponents of the method say the suffering was partly Smith’s fault.
He held his breath for too long before finally inhaling the nitrogen, they claim.
Alabama Department of Corrections Commissioner John Hamm said, “It appeared Smith was holding his breath as long as he could. So there was nothing out of the ordinary for what we expected.”
Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall says the execution is milder than Smith deserves
Hamm said of Smith’s movements on the stretcher: “That was all expected and included in the side effects that we have seen or investigated for nitrogen hypoxia.”
Four of Smith’s witnesses sat in the viewing room to watch his final, painful moments: his wife, his son, his lawyer and a friend.
Smith was sentenced to death in 1996 for the 1988 murder of a pastor’s wife, receiving only $1,000 for the murder.
Smith’s pastor John Ewell told DailyMail.com before his execution that the killer “really struggled” with the reality of his impending death, and officials said he barely touched his last meal of a T-bone steak, potato wedges, eggs and A1 sauce . Waffle House.
Hood’s claims that Smith’s execution would be a “horror show” directly contradict the narrative of Alabama officials, who praised it as a step forward for safe capital punishment as an “effective and humane method of execution.”
Smith’s execution marked the first time a new method was used on U.S. death row since lethal injections were first introduced 42 years ago.
But one of the main reasons Alabama switched to nitrogen gas for Smith’s execution was the widespread struggle that U.S. prisons have faced in recent years in obtaining lethal injection drugs.