I began my work against the death penalty in the United States in 1981. It would be reasonable to suppose that by now, four decades on, I would have seen it all.Not so. On September 22, Alabama lost a round in a ghoulish battle to execute Alan Miller. Initially, they promised a federal judge that they were ready to experiment with a novel method — nitrogen hypoxia (essentially, suffocating him by replacing oxygen in the air with pure nitrogen). The state then had to backtrack, saying they were not sure they knew how to do it, and so they would kill him by lethal injection.In one of those midnight battles with which I am achingly familiar, the Supreme Court voted five-to-four to let the Alabama executioners go ahead with their ritual sacrifice, but by then it was too late for their probing needles to find a vein. So, Miller is safe for a short while, though doubtless Alabama will set another date soon.
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