Alabama executes death-row prisoner with nitrogen gas

Alabama has carried out the second execution in the US using the controversial method of nitrogen gas, an experimental technique for humans that veterinarians have deemed unacceptable in the US and Europe for the euthanasia of most animals.

Alan Eugene Miller, 59, was pronounced dead at 6.38pm local time at a south Alabama prison.

Miller shook and trembled on the gurney for about two minutes with his body at times pulling against the restraints, followed by about six minutes of gasping breathing, according to the Associated Press.

The lethal method involves being strapped down with a respirator mask applied to the face and pure nitrogen piped in. The resulting oxygen deprivation will cause death by asphyxia.

Miller’s final words were “I didn’t do anything to be in here” and “I didn’t do anything to be on death row”, according to reporters who witnessed his death. His voice was at times muffled by the mask that covered his face from forehead to chin.

Miller’s death is the latest in an extraordinary week in the US in which five condemned men in five states have been executed over six days. On Friday, South Carolina killed Khalil Divine Black Sun Allah, in its first execution in 13 years, and on Tuesday, Texas killed Travis Mullis and Missouri put to death Marcellus Williams. Also on Thursday, Oklahoma executed Emmanuel Littlejohn.

The execution of Williams in Missouri prompted widespread outrage across the US and beyond after local prosecutors, the victim’s family and several trial jurors tried unsuccessfully to stop it going ahead. There was no forensic evidence to tie Williams to the crime, and the current prosecuting attorney for St Louis county concluded that the prisoner was actually innocent.

Alabama pressed ahead with Miller’s execution on Thursday over the 1999 shootings that killed three of his co-workers – Lee Holdbrooks, Christopher Scott Yancy and Terry Jarvis – despite deep misgivings about the new nitrogen method.

“Tonight, justice was finally served for these three victims,” said Alabama’s governor, Kay Ivey, said in a statement. “His acts were not that of insanity, but pure evil. Three families were forever changed by his heinous crimes, and I pray that they can find comfort all these years later.”

The first nitrogen execution was carried out, also by Alabama, in January.

An eyewitness for Associated Press described the death then of Kenneth Smith, 58. “Smith began to shake and writhe violently, in thrashing spasms and seizure-like movements … The force of his movements caused the gurney to visibly move at least once. Smith’s arms pulled against the straps holding him to the gurney. He lifted his head off the gurney and then fell back.”

Alabama described Smith’s death as a “textbook” execution.

Smith and Miller share a distinction in addition to the experimental killing method applied to them. Both men had the exceptionally unusual experience of surviving an execution attempt by lethal injection.

Related: Missouri executes Marcellus Williams despite prosecutors’ push to overturn conviction

In Smith’s case, in November 2022 he was strapped to the gurney for four hours, suspended for some of that time upside down, and his body riddled with needle holes in a vain attempt to place an IV line through which the lethal drugs could be injected.

Miller went through a similarly traumatic failed execution two months before Smith. Like Smith, he was strapped to the gurney in Alabama’s death chamber at Holman prison and put through a process his lawyers claimed was physical and mental torture.

He was repeatedly punctured with needle marks and left hanging vertically on the gurney in severe pain before the execution was called off. Lawyers argued that for him to have gone through such cruel and unusual punishment should have disqualified Alabama from further efforts to kill Miller, but the state authorities disagreed – they promptly initiated proceedings to execute him using nitrogen.

Maya Foa, joint executive director of the human rights group Reprieve, said that Alabama was typical of the increasingly extreme lengths to which death penalty states are prepared to go. “They’re telling themselves that executing people twice is fine, no matter how much the person suffered the first time. And that a man thrashing and gasping on the gurney for 10 minutes as he desperately fights for life is a ‘textbook’ nitrogen gas execution.”

The Associated Press contributed reporting