Federal judge blocks lethal injection for Alabama inmate who says he prefers execution by nitrogen

Montgomery, Ala. — - A federal judge on Monday blocked Alabama from executing an inmate who says the state lost his paperwork requesting an alternative to lethal injection.

U.S. District Judge R. Austin Huffaker, Jr. issued a preliminary injunction to block the state from executing Alan Miller on Thursday by any method other than nitrogen hypoxia, an untested method Miller says he requested but Alabama isn't ready to use. Miller was sentenced to die after being convicted of killing three people in a 1999 workplace shooting.

"Miller will likely suffer irreparable injury if an injunction does not issue because he will be deprived of the ability to die by the method he chose and instead will be forced to die by a method he sought to avoid and which he asserts will be painful," Huffaker wrote. The injury will be, "the loss of his 'final dignity'-to choose how he will die," the judge added.