The nitrogen gas execution of Alan Eugene Miller, 59, took place in Alabama earlier this year, making him the second prisoner in the United States to receive this method.
Nitrogen gas was used to execute an Alabama man who was found guilty of killing three people in separate workplace shootings on Thursday. This is the second time the technique has been applied in the nation.
At a south Alabama jail, Alan Eugene Miller,59, was declared deceased at 6:38 p.m. local time. For almost two minutes, he shook and shivered on the gurney, occasionally wriggling free of the bindings. A period of sporadic gasping breaths lasted for around six minutes.
“I didn’t do anything to be in here,” Miller added, concluding his speech.
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Miller was found guilty of killing three individuals, Terry Jarvis, Christopher Scott Yancy, and Lee Holdbrooks, because he thought they were spreading rumors about him.
In 2022, the state attempted to put him to death via lethal injection. Miller decided to succumb to nitrogen gas.
On August 5, 1999, in the Birmingham neighborhood of Pelham, Miller—a delivery truck driver for Ferguson Enterprises—killed the three men.
He entered the business, shot and killed Yancy, 28, and Holdbrooks, 32, before driving five miles to Post Airgas, his former workplace, and shooting Jarvis, 39.
Miller allegedly stated, “You’ve been spreading rumors about me,” before starting to shoot, according to a witness.
“Tonight, the execution method chosen by the prisoner finally brought justice to these three victims,” Governor Kay Ivey of Alabama stated in a statement. “His actions were genuine wickedness, not the product of psychosis. His horrible deeds left three families irrevocably altered, and I hope that after all these years, they can find solace.”
Miller was found guilty by a jury after just twenty minutes of deliberation.
In 2022, officials decided to put him to death since they couldn’t discover a vein to give him an IV. After coming to an undisclosed deal with the state, Miller, who had first contested the nitrogen gas procedure, decided not to pursue his legal action.
The technique entails covering the prisoner’s face with a respirator gas mask to replace oxygen-rich air with pure nitrogen gas, which results in death from oxygen deprivation.
The Death Penalty Information Center states that nitrogen gas executions are now permitted in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Oklahoma.
Earlier in the year, Alabama executed Kenneth Smith using this procedure for the first and only time. Smith’s death was denounced at the time by UN experts, who said that it “amounted to torture or other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment.”
