(United States) Alabama inmate sues to stop being the second person executed using NITROGEN GAS

An Alabama inmate has filed a lawsuit against the state to avoid being the second person to be executed using nitrogen gas citing 'cruel and unusual punishment.'

Alan Eugene Miller, 57, had survived an attempted execution by lethal injection in 2022, but is now set to be the second to die by nitrogen gas.

His execution date is set for September 22 at William C. Holman Correctional Facility in Escambia County, but his attorneys are fighting using the method after a murderer subjected to nitrogen gas 'writhed in agony' for 22 minutes on January 25.

Kenneth Smith was left shaking and convulsing as he was put to death, leading Miller's legal team to claim using death by nitrogen gas on their client would be a 'cruel and unusual punishment.'

The attorneys have also claimed that the stateis trying to' silence' miller, who spoke out against the murderous injection after the failedattempt- which they've called a violation of his free speech and due process of rights.

Rather than address these failures, the State of Alabama has tried to maintain secretivenessand avoid public scrutiny, in part by misrepresenting what happed in this muffedprosecution,' the attorneys wrote.

They said Alabama was unfit to conduct such an prosecution' without cruelly superadding pain and disgrace, and dragging death.'

A spokesman for Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall didn't incontinently respond to a textbook communication seeking comment on the action. Despite Smith's easily agonizing and torturous death, Alabama's Attorney General Steve Marshall pledged to keep using nitrogen gas to execute convicts.

Marshall filed a stir in February asking the courtto allow the Alabama Department of Corrections to execute Alan Eugene Miller, who has been on death row since 2000 for bogglingtwoco-workers and a former colleague at separate locales in 1999.

Alabama has also offered to prop othercountries seeking to carry out prosecutionsusing nitrogen gas, a system Alabama called' the most effortless and humane system of prosecution known to man' but one that mortalrights groups have condemned as cruel and torturous.

What passed last night was text,' Marshall saidafter Smith's prosecution, differing allegations from numerous, including Smith's spiritualcounsel who said it was' torture' and the' worst thing' he'd ever seen.

When they turned the nitrogen on, he began to agitate, he popped up on the gurney over and over again, he shook the whole gurney,' spiritualcounsel Jeff Hood, who was in the chamber, said incontinently after the prosecution.

Marshall said of the 165 convicts on Alabama's death row, 43 captures have decided to beexecuted via nitrogen hypoxia over murderousinjection when their time comes.

We will surely have further nitrogen hypoxia prosecutions in Alabama,' he concluded.

In forms before the prosecution, the stateargued that' the experts agree that nitrogen hypoxia is effortless because it causes unconsciousness in seconds.'

Marshall reportedly conceded that this wasn't exactly how it unfolded Thursday night as it took longer than anticipated, but said it wasdelicate to discern the timing due to difficultyknowing when the nitrogen began to flow.

It's intriguing to see the attorney general say that everything went harmonious with plans that they laid out,' Hedgepeth told MSNBC.

We saw him begin violently shaking, thrashingagainst the strips that held him down.

This was the fifth prosecution that I have witnessed in Alabama, and I have noway seen such a violent prosecution or a violent response to the means of prosecution.'