Alan Eugene Miller (57) was scheduled to be executed. However, the killing was called off after about two and a half hours.

DLNews Crime:

He had murdered three people during a workplace rampage. For this, Alan Eugene Miller (57) was to be executed in Alabama.

But: the killing went wrong. So now the prisoner is suing the US state.

On September 22, everything was ready; Miller had already taken his last meal and had been led from death row to the execution room.

What is said to have happened then, the lawyers of the 57-year-old describe so: The triple murderer had suffered "mental and physical agony" because the justice staff could not find access to a vein to put the lethal injection.

Miller had been stabbed 18 times, including at one point, even in his foot. The inmate's body had "shook in his restraints" as if he had been electrocuted. Then, according to the attorneys, "nausea, disorientation, confusion, and fear of whether he was about to be killed. Blood was leaking from some of his wounds." After about two and a half hours, they say, the execution was stopped.

Defense attorneys argue that the state violated a law to guarantee prisoners protection from cruel punishment. On the other hand, the Alabama attorney general has asked the Supreme Court to find a new execution date for Alan Eugene Miller quickly.

This is not the first time there have been problems with killing by lethal injection in Alabama. Joe Nathan James' execution took more than three hours, and the execution at Doyle Hamm's in 2018 also had to be canceled because of a failure to insert an intravenous line.

A lengthy legal battle had already preceded Miller's botched execution. The 57-year-old tried to win death by asphyxiation legally but failed before the Supreme Court. Shortly after its ruling, the American should have died.

It is doubtful whether the new maneuver of the spree killer, who has been on death row since 1999, will significantly prolong his life.

Governor Kay Ivey already clarified, "Even the circumstances that led to the cancellation of this execution do not change the fact that a jury made a decision. They do not change the fact that Mister Miller never denied his crimes. And they don't change the fact that three families are still grieving."