Alabama is preparing to execute a second inmate using nitrogen gas hypoxia, despite the first attempt being described as “torture” and the “most violent” execution in modern US history.
On Thursday, Alan Eugene Miller, 59, will be sentenced to death for the 1999 murder of three co-workers when he shot them because of rumors about his sexual orientation.
Unless a last-minute stay of execution is granted, the killer will be strapped to the same gurney as Kenneth Eugene Smith, who was the first nitrogen executioner to be executed in January.
Smith allegedly thrashed and surrendered against the restraints for 22 minutes while a firefighter’s mask filled with 100 percent nitrogen gas was placed over his face, causing him to die, until he suffocated.
On Thursday, Alan Eugene Miller, 59, will become the second inmate to be executed using nitrogen hypoxia, for the 1999 murders of three of his colleagues
A timeline of the first nitrogen gas execution in January, in which Kenneth Eugene Smith was thrown against his chains and suffocated to death.
Alabama officials have turned to nitrogen gas as an execution method in recent years due to widespread problems obtaining lethal injection drugs.
While some states have extended the expiration dates of their medicines despite warnings from human rights groups, other states have also considered reintroducing firing squads and electric chairs.
Alabama officials insist that nitrogen hypoxia is a painless and humane method of execution, a position they have maintained despite outrage over Smith’s reportedly painful death.
One of the journalists present in the room where Smith was executed, Lee Hedgepath, said the assassin “shook so violently that the bottom of the stretcher, where the metal frame meets the ground, lifted off the floor.”
Reports said Smith shook and clutched at the handcuffs on the gurney for several minutes, only growing weaker as he suffocated.
He then began to gag into his mask and remained conscious for several minutes. After his eventual death, witnesses emerged from the room in shock and confusion.
The killer’s spiritual guide, the Reverend Jeff Hood, who held a Bible to Smith as he died, said the execution was by far the “worst” of the more than a dozen he had witnessed.
Kenneth Eugene Smith, a hitman who was convicted in 1996 of murdering a pastor’s wife, for which he was paid only $1,000
Jeff Hood, Smith’s spiritual advisor before his execution, described the execution method as a “horror act” and said at the time that “an incredible amount of evil was unleashed in Alabama tonight.”
Miller faces the same fate on Thursday, more than 25 years after he opened fire on his coworkers at a welding supplies store in Pelham, Alabama.
The murders of his victims, Terry Jarvis, Lee Holdbrooks and Christopher Yancy, took place in 1999 because Miller was convinced that Jarvis had told the other men that he was homosexual.
He burst through the door of his former workplace with a gun and shouted, “I’m tired of people spreading rumors about me.”
He shot Yancy, 32, and Holdbrooks, 28, multiple times before fleeing in his truck and driving nearby to shoot Jarvis.
When he found Jarvis, he called out to him, “Hey, I hear you’re spreading rumors about me.”
Although Jarvis denied spreading the rumors, Miller shot him multiple times and later died in hospital.
Miller, who was seen after his arrest in 1999, shot and killed three of his former colleagues in a shooting spree sparked by rumors that he was homosexual.
A body is removed from the crime scene after Miller opened fire
Several hours later, Miller was arrested in his truck, where he was found with a Glock firearm and a magazine of empty ammunition.
A jury found him guilty of the murders and sentenced Miller to death, despite a psychiatrist’s testimony that he was “mentally ill” at the time of the shooting.
According to his federal appeals, Miller’s family has an extensive history of mental illness going back at least four generations, reports Today in the US.
Fearing a nitrogen execution, Miller has filed a lawsuit challenging the method, citing Smith’s violent death earlier this year.
Alabama’s attorney general countered that Smith’s execution was “by the book,” saying last month, “Miller’s execution will proceed as scheduled.”