An Alabama prisoner said prison staff poked him with needles for over an hour as they tried to find a vein. State officials called off the execution after they left him hanging on a gurney.
The attorneys for Alan Eugene Miller wrote about his experience in a court filing last week. Attorneys for Miller are trying to stop the state from carrying out a second execution.
Two men in scrubs used needles to probe Miller's arms, legs, feet and hands, at one point using a cell phone flashlight to help find a vein, according to a court filing. According to the attorneys, Alabama subjected Miller to the unnecessary and wanton pain that the Eighth Amendment was intended to prevent.
The state of Alabama asked the state Supreme Court to set a new execution date for Miller because the previous one was canceled because of a time issue.
"Despite this failed execution, the physical and mental torture it inflicted upon Mr. Miller, Defendants relentlessly seek to execute Mr. Miller again," attorneys for Miller wrote.
According to his attorneys, the amount of time it takes to stab someone with a needle is a constitutional amount of time.
In an earlier court hearing, the prisoner testified that he wanted to be executed by nitrogen hypoxia, a new method that the state has yet to try.
Miller said he was strapped to the gurney at 10:15 p.m. after the Supreme Court lifted the injunction.
Miller told the men that he could feel that they were not accessing his veins, but rather stabbed around his veins, after the two men used needles to probe various parts of his body for a vein. A third man tried to look for a vein by starting his neck slap.
There was a loud knock on the death chamber window and three men in scrubs stopped probing and left the chamber. The gurney was raised into the air. Miller said he hung there for about 20 minutes before he was told that his execution was off for the night.
Mr. Miller was frightened by the thought that he was about to be killed and was horrified by the sight of state employees staring at him while he was hanging from the gurney. There was blood leaking from Mr. Miller's wounds.
Miller was sentenced to death in 1999 for killing four people at work.
Due to the lateness of the hour, the Alabama Department ofCorrections was limited in the number of attempts it could make to get IV access. The state attorney general's office asked for a new date after A DOC stopped trying to get IV access at 11:30pm.
Alabama has acknowledged problems with vein access in the past. The state executed Joe Nathan James in July. The state of Alabama was unable to establish an IV line in time for the death penalty to take place.
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