Alan Eugene Miller

Alan Eugene Miller had already survived one of the worst botched executions in modern American history. On September 22, 2022, Alabama strapped him to the gurney for lethal injection, held him in what witnesses called a 'crucifixion position' for roughly ninety minutes, punctured his arms, hands, and feet, and openly discussed placing a central line into his neck before finally abandoning the attempt as the death warrant expired at midnight. Alabama settled Miller's § 1983 lawsuit by agreeing, in writing, never to try to kill him by lethal injection again. Nitrogen — a method with no protocol at the time — became, by court-ordered stipulation, the only option.

Two years later, on September 26, 2024, the state made good on the settlement. Miller was fitted with the same industrial respirator used on Kenneth Smith. Witnesses, including the Associated Press's Kim Chandler and reporters from AL.com and the Alabama Reflector, reported the same physical signature that had defined Smith's execution: sustained shaking against the restraints, pronounced gasping, and prolonged conscious breathing well past the state's represented timeline. The Alabama Department of Corrections again characterized what had happened as consistent with the protocol.

Miller's case is central to the constitutional record because it collapsed the state's defense that Smith's suffering had been an outlier. Two applications of the same protocol, on two different men, had now produced the same observable violence. This was the factual foundation that Carey Grayson, Jessie Hoffman, and ultimately Jeffery Lee's lawyers would carry into court.