Alabama weighs controversial new execution method

The state is preparing to conduct its first execution with nitrogen hypoxia

Alabama is preparing to potentially become the first state in the country to execute a person using nitrogen hypoxia as early as next week.

The state approved the controversial method for killing death row inmates back in 2018, when Gov Kay Ivey signed a law giving death row inmates a choice of whether to die by nitrogen hypoxia or lethal injection.

Alan Eugene Miller, who was convicted of murdering three people during a workplace mass shooting in Shelby County in 1999, claims that he signed a document stating his preference to be killed with nitrogen hypoxia due to his fear of needles in 2018 but that a corrections officer lost it.

The Alabama attorney general’s office has claimed that there is no record of Miller signing any form opting into death by nitrogen hypoxia. Miller is currently scheduled to be executed on September 22 and, in late August, Miller’s lawyers filed a federal lawsuit claiming that he made his legally protected choice to be killed with nitrogen hypoxia and that his choice should be granted.

Depending on what the court system decides, starting with US District Court for the Middle District of Alabama, Miller could ultimatley become the first person in the US ever executed via nitrogen hypoxia — a form of inert gas asphyxiation that dilutes the level of oxygen in the body to a fatally low amount.

Oklahoma and Mississippi have also approved the nitrogen hypoxia as a means of execution, but neither state has yet used it.

The highest profile push for the use of hypoxia as a method of execution came several years ago when Russell Bucklew of Missouri sued for the right to die by nitrogen hypoxia instead of lethal injection due to a medical condition he had. The US Supreme Court ultimately rejected his request in 2018. Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote at the time that the method was untested and that Bucklew did not provide a method for how to properly administer it. Bucklew was ultimately executed by lethal injection the next year.

Now, the courts will again weigh the possibility of an American state killing one of its citizens by starving them of oxygen — this time in a state that has legalised the execution method.

Even if Miller’s appeal is unsuccessful, it seems likely that Alabama will soon confront the possibility of using the exection method again. According to AL.com, after Alabama gave death row inmates the option to choose whether to be executed by hypoxia or lethal injection in 2018, roughly 50 of the state’s 177 death row inmates opted for hypoxia.

There are longstanding concerns about the possibility of lethal injections going awry in the state, including in the recent execution of Joe Nathan James, Jr.