An Alabama man convicted of killing three people in separate workplace shootings was executed Thursday with nitrogen gas, the second time the practice has been used in the country.
Alan Eugene Miller, 59, was pronounced dead at 6:38 p.m. local time at a south Alabama prison. He shook and shivered on the gurney for nearly two minutes, with his body occasionally pushing against the restraints. The following six minutes were spent taking sporadic gasping breaths. “I didn’t do anything to be in here,” Miller remarked in his final words.
Miller was convicted of murdering three men: Lee Holdbrooks, Christopher Scott Yancy, and Terry Jarvis, whom he believed were gossiping about him. In 2022, the state attempted to execute him using lethal injection. Miller decided to die from nitrogen gas.
Miller, a delivery truck driver for Ferguson Enterprises, killed the three men on August 5, 1999, in the Birmingham suburb of Pelham. He stepped into the company and shot Holdbrooks, 32, and Yancy, 28, before driving 5 miles to Post Airgas, where he previously worked, and shooting Jarvis, 39. “You’ve been spreading rumors about me,” Miller stated before shooting, according to a witness.
“Tonight, justice was finally served for these three victims through the method of execution chosen by the inmate,” Alabama Governor Kay Ivey said in a statement. “His actions were not insane but purely evil. Three families were irrevocably impacted by his horrible crimes, and I hope they can find consolation all these years later. After approximately 20 minutes of deliberation, the jury convicted Miller.
Officials were unable to discover a vein to connect an IV to him, prompting plans to execute him in 2022. Miller first disputed the nitrogen gas protocol but dropped his complaint after reaching an undisclosed agreement with the state. The method is placing a respirator gas mask over the inmate’s face, which replaces breathable air with pure nitrogen gas, resulting in death from a lack of oxygen.
According to the Death Penalty Information Center, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Oklahoma have also embraced nitrogen gas as an execution method. Alabama utilized the procedure for the first and only time earlier this year to kill Kenneth Smith. At the time, United Nations experts denounced Smith’s death, stating that it “amounted to torture or other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment.”
