Alabama | Calls for a Moratorium on Executions Grow

In the wake of Alabama’s failed attempt to execute Alan Miller last week, calls to suspend executions in the state are growing.

Alabama scheduled Alan Miller’s execution for Thursday, September 22, at 6 pm. Earlier that day, the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a lower court’s injunction barring the State from executing Mr. Miller by lethal injection because it found it substantially likely that Mr. Miller had elected nitrogen hypoxia.

The State then filed an emergency motion asking the Supreme Court to vacate the injunction and allow the lethal injection to proceed. Shortly after 9 pm, the Court granted the State’s motion without explanation over the dissenting votes of 4 justices.

At 9:20 pm, officials at Holman Prison in Atmore, Alabama, said that Alabama’s Attorney General had instructed them to begin the execution. Media, family members, and attorneys expected to be transported to the death chamber to witness the execution. But that did not happen. No witnesses or attorneys were present as prison staff tried for over two hours to establish intravenous access.

At 12:31 am, the state’s corrections commissioner, John Hamm, announced that prison staff had failed to set an IV line and the execution attempt was halted shortly before the warrant expired at midnight.

“Due to the time constraints resulting from the lateness of the court proceedings, the execution was called off once it was determined the condemned’s veins could not be accessed in accordance with our protocol before the expiration of the deadline,” Mr. Hamm said.

Mr. Hamm told reporters that Mr. Miller was still alive and in his prison cell but provided no other details. On Friday, a federal court ordered the State to allow Mr. Miller’s attorneys to document his injuries and to preserve physical evidence from the execution attempt.

As a leading death penalty scholar put it, Mr. Miller’s case exemplifies “both Alabama’s extraordinary carelessness and the Supreme Court’s cold indifference to that carelessness.”

A History of Botched Executions

Last week’s failed attempt to place an IV after trying for hours in secret is at least the 3rd time in the last 4 years that Alabama has botched a lethal injection execution.

Alabama’s execution of Joe James less than two months ago has been identified as “among the worst botches in the modern history of the U.S. death penalty.” Like last week, no witnesses, attorneys, or reporters were present during the prison staff’s hours-long attempt to place an IV. When witnesses were finally allowed into the execution chamber, Mr. James’s eyes were closed and he was unresponsive.

Mr. Hamm did not provide a reason for the lengthy delay, but evidence discovered during a private autopsy revealed numerous puncture wounds where staff forced needles into his hands, wrists, and arms, bruises and lacerations showing he struggled against the straps tying him down, and jagged lacerations indicating that prison staff attempted a painful cutdown procedure to expose a vein.

The evidence showed that Mr. James suffered for over 3 hours—possibly the longest lethal injection execution in American history.

And that was after Alabama was forced to call off its execution of Doyle Hamm in 2018 because prison staff could not set an IV line after two and a half hours. Then-ADOC Commissioner Jeff Dunn told reporters, “I wouldn’t characterize what we had tonight as a problem,” but photographs revealed that the execution team had jabbed Mr. Hamm with needles more than 10 times in his feet, legs, and groin, likely puncturing his bladder.

State Urged to Stop Executions

Local thought leaders have demanded that “Alabama must stop conducting lethal injection executions” until it can establish its ability to carry out executions responsibly and humanely. As one columnist put it bluntly this week, “Until Alabama can get it right, stop it.”

“At minimum,” Roy S. Johnson wrote after Mr. James’s execution, “the Alabama Department of Corrections (ADOC) must allow someone other than its own officials to witness the process of inserting the IV. Currently, it does not.”

In fact, Alabama has one of the nation’s most secretive and least transparent execution policies. It not only refuses to disclose information about its execution protocols to attorneys, reporters, or the public, but it also has failed to explain to the public what went wrong during these botched executions.

The Response to Botched Executions in Other States

Other states have responded to similarly botched executions by suspending executions to determine what went wrong and how to correct it.

After Ohio had three botched executions in a four-year period, it changed its lethal injection protocol. But the state’s problems with lethal injection continued, and on January 16, 2014, Dennis McGuire struggled, made guttural noises, gasped for air, and choked for about 10 minutes before being declared dead after Ohio subjected him to an experimental, never-before-used combination of drugs. After that botched execution, Ohio Gov. John Kasich placed a moratorium on all executions.

Oklahoma paused executions for 6 years and launched a grand jury investigation after the botched executions of Clayton Lockett and Charles Warner in 2014 and 2015.

Arkansas has not executed anyone since April 27, 2017, when Kenneth Williams convulsed violently as he died on the gurney, the fourth person put to death in an 11-day execution spree during which at least 2 of the executions were botched.

Most recently, Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee announced on May 2 that all scheduled executions in that state would be paused through the end of the year to allow for a third-party investigation to address “operational failures” in the state’s lethal injection protocol that led the governor to halt the execution of Oscar Smith on April 21.

Source: eji.org, Staff, September 28, 2022

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"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde

Two Executions In Six Hours: Florida Set For Historical Double Execution Tuesday

Florida is preparing to execute two death row inmates on Tuesday, July 28, in an action that would mark the state’s first double execution in more than 60 years. Former police officer James Duckett, 68, is scheduled to die by lethal injection at 12 p.m., followed six hours later by 80-year-old Dominick Occhicone at 6 p.m. If carried out, these will mark the 39th and 40th executions under Gov. Ron DeSantis and the 11th and 12th in the state since the beginning of 2026. In response, Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty (FADP) has launched petition and letter-writing efforts asking DeSantis to halt both procedures. The group has organized two public vigils outside Florida State Prison in Raiford, set for 11 a.m. and 5 p.m., contingent on whether stays are issued.

Florida executes Dominick Occhicone

Florida executes 2 men in a day. Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis has made Florida's death chamber the nation’s busiest at the end of his final term. STARKE, Fla. — Florida on Tuesday became the first state in nearly a decade to carry out two executions in a single day, the last an 80-year-old man who was the second-oldest inmate known to receive a lethal injection in modern U.S. history. Hours earlier, the state executed a former police officer convicted of killing a young girl.

Florida | 49 years on death row, killer of Bonita Springs teen learns death date

A Fort Myers man on death row for nearly five decades learned his execution date as Gov. Ron DeSantis signed his order Thursday, July 30. Harold Gene Lucas, then 24, shot and killed his 16-year-old girlfriend, Anthia Jill Piper in Bonita Springs on August 14, 1976. Lucas was 24 when he was charged in Piper's shooting death at her parents' home on Aug. 14, 1976. The execution is set for Sept. 1 in a state that has accelerated its pace under DeSantis the past two years, with a record of 19 executions in 2025. Piper was shot seven times by Lucas, who claimed to be intoxicated.

Florida executes James Duckett

Double execution: 1st of 2 inmates is put to death in Florida Florida has executed James Duckett, a 68-year-old former cop convicted of killing an 11-year-old girl in 1987. The state is set to execute an 80-year-old man 6 hours later for a 1986 murder. Florida carried out the 1st double execution in more than 60 years, executing former police officer James Duckett and later scheduling the execution of 80‑year‑old Dominick Occhicone, amid Governor Ron DeSantis’s aggressive push to increase death penalties in the state. Florida has put to death the 1st of 2 inmates in the state's 1st double execution in more than 60 years amid an aggressive death penalty push by Gov. Ron DeSantis.

Florida | Former warden recalls botched electrocution that left him battling PTSD for 13 years and turned him into an abolitionist

Ron McAndrew anticipated it would be just another standard execution. He had been assigned to carry out the death of Cuban refugee Pedro Medina via electric chair within the confines of Florida State Prison. Fifteen years had passed since Medina's conviction for the murder of 52-year-old Dorothy James, and McAndrew's responsibility was to oversee the administration of lethal electrical currents to his brain. Having already supervised two previous executions using the identical procedure and raised in a community that strongly supported capital punishment, he expected a swift conclusion with justice delivered.

Iran erects iron gallows in Isfahan protest square

An iron gallows has been erected in an Isfahan square where protests erupted in January. Families of several of the 10 remaining prisoners sentenced to death have been summoned for farewell visits. An iron gallows erected in Ali-Khani Square in the central Iranian city of Isfahan has raised fears that the regime is preparing to publicly execute protesters arrested during nationwide demonstrations in January. Sources who spoke with Iran International said large numbers of security forces had been deployed in the area, while the families of several prisoners sentenced to death had been summoned to the prison for farewell visits.

North Korea | 'I was only 9': North Korean defector recalls childhood memory of public execution

Kim Eun-joo was 9 years old when her teacher stopped their lesson and told the class to follow her outside. The children were marched to a public execution ground in North Korea. “I would cry even when our family dog died,” Kim said in a recent interview with The Korea Times. “But the first time I watched humans killing a human, I had no words for what I was feeling. It was the most brutal scene I have ever seen, in any movie or in real life.” The memory has stayed with her ever since. Now a human rights advocate after defecting from North Korea, Kim recently brought that childhood scene to the 9th World Congress Against the Death Penalty in Paris, where North Korea’s use of public executions and capital punishment was officially placed on the agenda for the first time.

USA | What happens in the final weeks before an execution? These reporters were inside the room.

The journalists behind ‘The Last 12 Weeks’ earned extraordinary access to a death penalty defense team—and faced difficult ethical choices Many defense lawyers are naturally cagey. They work in a pressure cooker, protecting their clients’ rights while fighting for the best possible outcome. And arguably, the stakes can’t get any higher than trying to save a client’s life. So no, defense lawyers don’t usually invite journalists into strategy meetings. But that’s what happened when Marshall Project reporter Maurice Chammah and Serial Productions senior producer Alvin Melathe spent the final few months before a Texas execution embedded with a capital defense team.

19 July 1943 | Auschwitz's Largest Public Hanging: 12 Polish Prisoners Executed in Escape Reprisal

OSWIECIM, Poland — The SS carried out the largest public hanging in Auschwitz history on July 19, 1943, executing 12 Polish prisoners before other inmates as collective punishment for escapes and civilian contacts. The victims, all from the camp’s surveyors’ labor unit, were hanged on gallows built in front of the camp kitchen during an Auschwitz I roll call. The SS orchestrated this reprisal following prisoner escapes from the surveyors’ detail and unauthorized communication between inmates and civilians. Camp authorities used the recent escapes as a pretext to impose collective punishment.

Idaho | How Bryan Kohberger’s Guilty Plea Move Could Be His Death Sentence

If Bryan Kohberger successfully withdraws his guilty plea and goes to trial for the murders of four University of Idaho students, it could lead to him being sentenced to death, experts told Newsweek . Kohberger, 31, filed a handwritten petition on Monday from the Idaho Maximum Security Penitentiary, where he is serving four consecutive life sentences for the murders of Kaylee Goncalves, Ethan Chapin, Xana Kernodle and Madison Mogen in a rental home near the university's campus in Moscow, Idaho, in 2022. Kohberger pleaded guilty to the fatal stabbings just over a year ago, a month before jury selection was set to start.

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