Alabama earns a big fat 'F' on human rights

Three days after Deputy Attorney General (AG) James Houts told a federal judge there was a “very good chance” Alabama might become the first state to kill a human being using nitrogen gas — when the state executes Alan Eugene Miller on Sept. 22 — John Hamm, Commissioner of Alabama’s beleaguered Department of Corrections (ADOC), filed an affidavit contradicting Houts. (Hamm did so at the direction of the judge, who found Houts’s statements “vague and imprecise.”)

Hamm didn’t hem and haw (like Houts): ADOC’s not ready to implement its secretive and abominable gassing-protocol for executions, leastways, not yet. Instead, Hamm hastened to add, ADOC “remains ready to carry out [Miller’s] execution by lethal injection.” 

Whether or not Alabama will be allowed to kill Miller by way of its brutal, often bungled, always barbaric, lethal injection protocol — following Alabama’s legal lynching of Joe Nathan James Jr. on July 28, the fourth Black man in a row the state executed — is, what lawyers call “sub judice,” or, under judicial consideration. 

Miller, who a psychiatrist once testified is severely mentally ill, claims he elected to be gassed to death once Alabama’s nitrogen-gassing protocol is finalized — and withstands legal scrutiny; Miller alleges Alabama lost his paperwork showing this, which he claims to have timely submitted to ADOC in 2018. Miller is, moreover, asking for federal relief because he doesn’t want his execution to be botched — like Alabama botched Joe Nathan James Jr.’s execution, subjecting James to multiple hours of ineffable suffering, during what some experts are calling the longest lethal injection ever.    

Opining on Alabama Governor Kay Ivey’s stolid, empathy-empty approach to all of this awfulness, when she asserted, “All of that is part of a court process right now, I’m going to trust the courts.” — Representative Chris England of Tuscaloosa tweeted: “You know what? Alabama doesn’t have to find another way to kill someone if lethal injection can’t be used. Alabama doesn’t have to put people in gas chambers. We don’t have to seek vengeance in the name of justice. Simply put, choose life.” 

Rep. England is, of course, right. Alabama, a proud “pro-life” state, should end the death penalty and act consistently with its avowed morality; it should stop, as the overly hackneyed-but-still-apt saying goes, killing people in order to show that killing people is wrong. 

Recently, at Rep. England’s invitation, I submitted a letter to his office chock full of proposals from lawyers and social workers from around the country — who specialize in death penalty work — with intelligent ideas for legislative reform in Alabama on the death penalty. When the time comes, perhaps even during the next legislative session, I urge all Alabamians — whether Republican, Democrat, Independent, or party-less but have a strong moral foundation — to rally around Rep. England. While the death penalty remains unabolished in Alabama, he, at least, is one politician working to enact desperately needed reforms.          

Because, just for example, continuing its odious tradition of ducking and dodging transparency and accountability concerning exactly how Alabama puts its prisoners to death, yet another untenable and unreasonable spout of Deputy AG Houts — again, recently, in federal court — was that the full protocol for nitrogen executions, even when it is ready, will likely will not be made public; even more mind-bogglingly, Houts maintains attorneys of condemned prisoners are also not entitled to such disclosure. 

Petulantly, probably put forth with a preening, teenage-like pout, Houts touts he wants to “end the practice of [condemned prisoners] grading the [ADOC’s] homework.”

Like his boss AG Steve Marshall, Gov. Ivey, and the entire ADOC, Houts doesn’t appreciate — even despite Alabama’s longstanding (and repeat) despicable history of botching executions, one that persisted long before Alabama’s most recent atrocity committed against Joe Nathan James Jr. — that it’s critically important for all citizens in Alabama to know exactly how the killing of death row prisoners occurs (in their name, and with their tacit approval). 

This attitude, this aggressive resistance by the ADOC and AG’s office, against the public’s right to know how Alabama is killing people, has to change. Mentally ill human beings should not, nay, they must not, be put to death first, before other condemned prisoners, because they’re mentally ill (and therefore, as a result, didn’t realize it might delay their execution some to elect to be gassed to death on a xeroxed form they were haphazardly handed by unorganized, unthinking prison officials). Torture, as so often happens in Alabama’s death chamber, must be outlawed. 

“Simply put,” to quote Rep. England, it’s long past time Alabama joined the rest of the civilized world — those parts of America and those other parts of the world — that long ago abolished the death penalty. Because it isn’t just condemned prisoners and their attorneys who rightly, and justly, are entitled to closely inspect and grade Alabama’s “homework” — giving it a well-deserved fat “F” on human rights — when it insists on killing. We all are. Each and every one of us. 

And grades are due.                

Stephen Cooper is a former D.C. public defender who worked as an assistant federal public defender in Alabama between 2012 and 2015. He has contributed to numerous magazines and newspapers in the United States and overseas. He writes full-time and lives in Woodland Hills, California. Follow him on Twitter at @SteveCooperEsq