Alabama conducts second execution by nitrogen gas in the U.S.

 The 18th Execution of 2024

Alabama conducted the second execution in the United States using nitrogen gas on September 29, 2024, with media witnesses describing the prisoner shaking and gasping for several minutes before dying on the gurney, reported The New York Times.

Alan E. Miller, who was convicted in the 1999 murders of three men he believed were spreading rumors about him, was pronounced dead at 6:38 p.m. Central time in Atmore, Ala.

Reporters who witnessed the execution said that Mr. Miller shook on the gurney for about two minutes and appeared to gasp periodically for roughly six minutes as the nitrogen gas flowed.

The state prisons commissioner, John Hamm, responded that officials had been expecting “involuntary body movements as the body is depleted of oxygen.” He said the execution had gone “just as we had planned.” He declined to say whether Mr. Miller had been sedated.

Gov. Kay Ivey said in a statement that Mr. Miller had acted with “pure evil” in carrying out the murders, and she declared that “justice was finally served for these three victims.”

In January, the state carried out what was described as the first nitrogen execution anywhere in the world, and other states have said they are looking into doing so as well as they continue to experience problems obtaining lethal injection drugs.

Several witnesses to that execution said that the prisoner, Kenneth Smith, shook violently as the nitrogen gas was administered and then writhed before his body eventually stopped moving. Witnesses told The New York Times that the gurney had shaken in the execution chamber and that Mr. Smith had appeared to be gasping for air.

But the state’s attorney general, Steve Marshall, has hailed the execution, calling it “textbook” and saying that Alabama had become a pioneer that other states could follow. “Alabama has done it, and now so can you,” he said.

Nitrogen, a colorless, odorless gas, is not harmful in itself and makes up about 78 percent of the air. But when it is used in an execution, a prisoner is strapped to a gurney and a mask is placed over the head, after which a stream of pure nitrogen gas, absent life-sustaining oxygen, produces a fatal but supposedly painless form of suffocation known as nitrogen hypoxia. The method has been used in some medically assisted suicides.

Deanna Smith, wife of Kenneth Smith, was comforted by Jeff Hood after the execution of Mr. Smith in January in Atmore, Ala.Credit...Edmund D. Fountain for The New York Times

Lawyers for the state said Mr. Smith might have moved on the gurney during the execution in January because he tried to hold his breath once the nitrogen had begun flowing.

Thursday’s execution was the second time that the state had tried to carry out the death penalty for Mr. Miller, 59. In September 2022, Mr. Miller fought his planned execution by lethal injection, arguing in court that he had opted for a nitrogen execution but that the state had lost his request.

The U.S. Supreme Court sided with the state, allowing the lethal injection to proceed, and Mr. Miller was taken to the execution chamber. Workers spent more than an hour unsuccessfully trying to insert an intravenous line into his veins, and the execution was called off sometime before midnight, when his death warrant expired.

Later that year, after several problems with executions, Governor Ivey temporarily stopped all executions in the state and called for the prison system to review its procedures. A handful of changes were made, including lengthening by 12 hours the window during which officials can carry out death warrants. Executions resumed in 2023.

Death penalty opponents have warned of a litany of potential problems with using nitrogen gas, including the possibility that the prisoner could suffer a seizure, vomit under the mask or experience other problems if the mask’s seal were broken, diluting the nitrogen and prolonging the prisoner’s suffering.

Maya Foa, an executive director of Reprieve US, a nonprofit that targets human rights issues, said Alabama’s decision to execute Mr. Miller a second time was part of a long, recent history of problematic attempts to carry out the death penalty, both by lethal injection and nitrogen.

“These methods of execution have two things in common: They are human experimentation that risks causing horrific pain, and failed attempts to hide the violent reality of the state taking a human life,” Ms. Foa said.

Across the United States, 18 people have been executed this year. Seven more are scheduled to die in five states before the end of the year, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. On Thursday, Oklahoma executed Emmanuel Littlejohn, who was convicted in a 1992 convenience store robbery in which the store owner was fatally shot. A state parole board had recommended that he be granted clemency, but Gov. Kevin Stitt rejected the advice and allowed the execution to go forward.

Executions have been on a general decline since 1999, when a modern peak of 98 were carried out, and death sentences have dropped dramatically as well.

This month so far, five people have been executed in five states. South Carolina carried out the state’s first execution in more than a decade last week, with a lethal injection to Freddie Owens. And Missouri and Texas each executed a person on Tuesday.

This week’s execution of Marcellus Williams in Missouri took place over the objections of the local prosecutor’s office that had convicted him of murder. The prosecutor there had argued in recent months that Mr. Williams could be innocent and that his prosecution had been mishandled.

In Alabama, Mr. Miller’s lawyers argued in court earlier this year that it was “difficult to overstate the mental and physical anguish” that he had endured during the failed attempt in 2022. They said men in scrubs had tried unsuccessfully to insert intravenous lines in his arms, his hands and one of his feet.

They asked in that lawsuit that a medical professional be present during the nitrogen execution and hold the mask on Mr. Miller’s face. It was not clear whether the state had agreed to that, as a settlement reached last month was confidential.

Mr. Miller was convicted in the murders of three men on Aug. 5, 1999, at two Alabama businesses where he had worked, a plumbing company and a warehouse operation that sold oxygen canisters. He was 34 at the time of the shootings. The victims were Lee Holdbrooks, 32; Christopher Yancey, 28; and Terry Jarvis, 39.

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