Eight-word final statement words from inmate before his execution by nitrogen hypoxia

Saturday, September 28, 2024 – An Alabama death row inmate gave a chilling eight-word final statement in the moments before his execution by nitrogen hypoxia.

Alan Eugene Miller, 59, became the second person to die from the controversial method on Thursday night, September 26. He had been on death row for decades for killing three people in back-to-back workplace shootings in 1999.

Protesting his innocence until the end, his final words were: 'I didn't do anything to be in here.'

He added: 'I didn't do anything to be on death row.'

Alabama corrections officials then pumped nitrogen gas into a mask that covered Miller's face from his forehead to his chin, forcing him to shake and tremble on the gurney for about two minutes.

That was followed by about six minutes of periodic gasping breaths before he finally went still.

Miller was finally pronounced dead at around 6.38pm, Alabama Department of Corrections Commissioner John Hamm said at an ensuing news conference, noting the two minutes of shaking was to be expected.

'There's going to be involuntary body movements as the body is depleted of oxygen, so that is nothing we did not expect,' Hamm said.

'Everything went according to plan and according to our protocol, so it went just as we had planned.'

But Hamm later admitted that a corrections officer had to adjust the inmate's mask before the gas started to flow.

'That's just making sure the mask is fitted,' he said.

The execution was the second to use the new method Alabama first employed in January when Kenneth Smith was put to death.

The method involves placing a respirator gas mask over the inmate’s face to replace breathable air with pure nitrogen gas, causing death by lack of oxygen.

Miller had selected the option to die by asphyxiation in a 2018 form distributed to Alabama death row inmates, AL.com reports. But the state was still not prepared to use nitrogen hypoxia as a form of execution when officials received a warrant for Miller's execution on September 22 and opted to instead try to execute him by lethal injection.

That attempt was then called off when state officials said they could not access Miller's veins before the execution warrant expired at midnight.

The inmate later filed a lawsuit against the prison, claiming that prison workers poked him for ninety minutes while trying to start an IV and left him hanging vertically as he lay strapped into a gurney, the Montgomery Advisor reports.

State prosecutors ultimately settled the suit, and agreed not to execute Miller using any method other than nitrogen hypoxia.

The method of execution was finally used earlier this year at Smith's execution, at which the inmate was seen shaking, writhing, and thrashing up and down on the gurney for two minutes after the nitrogen gas started filling up his mask.

That was followed by five to seven minutes of heavy breathing and slight gasping.

In the aftermath, Miller challenged the state's nitrogen hypoxia protocol, claiming it could cause him undue suffering, thus violating his Eighth Amendment protections against cruel and unusual punishment.

His attorneys argued that the state did not offer any proof for their claims that Smith held his breath, and instead 'hang[s] their hat exclusively on the self-serving testimony of a witness who claims to have remembered Smith's oxygen levels nearly seven months after the execution.'

The witness, an execution team captain, did not write down the oxygen levels, nor did he tell anyone about the oxygen levels the night of the execution, Miller's lawyers argued, according to AL.com.