Alabama inmate endured "torture" during botched execution, attorneys say
CBSN
An Alabama inmate said prison staff poked him with needles for over an hour as they tried to find a vein during an aborted lethal injection last month. At one point, they left him hanging vertically on a gurney before state officials made the decision to call off the execution.
Attorneys for 57-year-old Alan Eugene Miller wrote about his experience during Alabama's Sept. 22 execution attempt in a court filing made last week. Miller's attorneys are trying to block the state from attempting a second lethal injection.
Two men in scrubs used needles to repeatedly probe Miller's arms, legs, feet and hands, at one point using a cell phone flashlight to help their search for a vein, according to the Oct. 6 court filing. The attorneys called Miller the "only living execution survivor in the United States" and said Alabama subjected Miller "to precisely the unnecessary and wanton infliction of pain that the Eighth Amendment was intended to prohibit."
