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Daily Mirror
Daily Mirror
World
Liam Buckler

Death row killer spared lethal injection after he's poked with needles for hour

A execution "survivor" has been ordered by a judge not to have another lethal injection after officials botched-up his death.

Alan Eugene Miller, a former delivery driver convicted of killing three men in a workplace shooting, in Birmingham, Alabama, US, in 1999 was due to be executed on September 22.

However, his death was halted because of problems establishing an intravenous line as officials poked him with needles for over an hour.

Miller was also left hanging vertically as he lay strapped to a gurney at one point.

But after a stay of execution, Miller reached a settlement on Monday which stated he would never be killed using lethal injection again.

The inmate claimed the state lost his paperwork, which chose nitrogen hypoxia as his execution preference.

He revealed he was left tortured during the state's botched attempt.

Alan Eugene Miller was due to be executed in September but officials botched up the killing (Dave Martin/AP/REX/Shutterstock)

On Tuesday, S. District Judge R. Austin Huffaker Jr agreed to the settlement, which was brought by Miller, begging the judge not to put through him the ordeal again.

He will instead be killed by nitrogen hypoxia, which is an execution method used in Alabama.

Nitrogen hypoxia was approved in the state of Alabama in 2018 as a method of execution but it has never been carried out for a death sentence in the US.

Miller will be executed using a plastic mask strapped to the prisoner whilst odourless nitrogen streams into the mask from a tank - leaving him unaware he's dying.

The change of execution method comes after Alabama have failed to kill at least four inmates since 2018 - with three of those executions stopped.

Kenneth Eugene Smith's death this month was scrapped after officials tried for an hour to connect an IV line.

And last week, lawyers for Smith launched a lawsuit against the prison system stating it violated the US Constitution.

Smith's attorneys are asking a federal judge for him not to be killed by lethal injection again after he was already "subjected to ever-escalating levels of pain and torture" on the night of the failed attempt.

In 2018, Alabama also called off the execution of Doyle Lee Hamm for the same problems.

Hamm reached an agreement with the state that prevented further execution attempts, although he remained on death row.

He later died of natural causes.

Alabama officials blamed time constraints for the three halted executions.

Although the state's July execution of Joe Nathan James was carried out, it was filled with complications including a three-hour delay after a problem accessing an IV line.

Just last week, Alabama Governor Kay Ivey announced a pause on executions in order to review the methods used as families criticised the state's multiple botched attempts.

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