The Alabama Department of Corrections suspended an execution Thursday after it couldn’t find a vein while preparing prisoner Alan Eugene Miller for lethal injection, a delay the state blamed on last-minute legal filings that went to the U.S. Supreme Court.
The cancellation comes after a week of legal battles over which method the state would use to execute Miller, a back-and-forth that death-penalty opponents say reveals larger dysfunctions around how capital punishment operates — or fails to — in the 27 states that still carry out executions.
The execution was stalled until around 9 p.m. Thursday, when Supreme Court justices voted 5-4 to lift a lower court’s injunction. Alabama Department of Corrections Commissioner John Hamm ultimately halted the execution effort around 11:30 p.m., saying in a statement that prison staffers could not find a vein “in accordance with ADOC protocol.”
The lack of transparency around the failed execution and the state’s yet-unused nitrogen hypoxia protocol only serve to undermine the legitimacy of the death penalty as constitutional or reliable, said Robert Dunham, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center.
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