Alabama Governor Asks State Supreme Court for More Time to Carry Out Executions

As part of her response to a series of botched exe­cu­tions, Alabama Governor Kay Ivey has sent a let­ter to the Alabama Supreme Court ask­ing it to allow the Department of Corrections to extend the time with­in which exe­cu­tions can be car­ried out. Governor Ivey’s let­ter fol­lows her November announce­ment of a ​“top-to-bot­tom review” of the state’s exe­cu­tion pro­ce­dures. The let­ter offered no expla­na­tion of the exe­cu­tion teams’ length delays in plac­ing IV lines, nor has Governor Ivey made any pub­lic state­ments about address­ing that aspect of the state’s recent botched executions. 

The December 12, 2022 let­ter is the first pub­lic com­ment Governor Ivey has made on the top­ic since she announced the review of exe­cu­tion pro­ce­dures on November 21. Governor Ivey wrote in the let­ter that Alabama Department of Corrections Commissioner John Hamm ​“has request­ed assis­tance in increas­ing the amount of time avail­able to car­ry out an exe­cu­tion.” As a result, the gov­er­nor asked the Alabama Supreme Court to revise court rules that spec­i­fy a sin­gle exe­cu­tion date. Citing rules from oth­er juris­dic­tions, she pro­posed lan­guage that would allow the ADOC Commissioner to set a new exe­cu­tion date “[i]f the date des­ig­nat­ed in the exe­cu­tion war­rant pass­es by rea­son of a stay of exe­cu­tion, or due to a delay in the exe­cu­tion process caused by a stay of exe­cu­tion.” Alternatively, she offered the court the option to set an exe­cu­tion peri­od longer than a single day.

According to the let­ter, Hamm is also explor­ing chang­ing the exe­cu­tion pro­to­col so that exe­cu­tions start ear­li­er in the day. The pro­to­col cur­rent­ly sets exe­cu­tions to begin at 6 pm Central Time.

Alabama’s last three exe­cu­tion attempts have involved lengthy attempts at set­ting IV lines. Officials spent an hour attempt­ing to set IV lines to exe­cute Kenneth Smith on November 17 and at least 90 min­utes for the attempt­ed exe­cu­tion of Alan Miller on September 22. Both Smith’s and Miller’s exe­cu­tions were halt­ed as the mid­night expi­ra­tion of the war­rant approached. The state’s July 28 exe­cu­tion of Joe James Jr. was the longest botched lethal injec­tion in U.S. his­to­ry, tak­ing more than three hours to com­plete. In the December 12 let­ter, the gov­er­nor attrib­uted the state’s fail­ures to ​“last-minute games­man­ship by death row inmates and their lawyers.” 

ACLU senior coun­sel Alison Mollman crit­i­cized the governor’s pro­pos­al, stat­ing that “[t]he gov­er­nor is ask­ing that the very peo­ple who botched mul­ti­ple exe­cu­tions be giv­en addi­tion­al time to vio­late the 8^th Amendment’s pro­hi­bi­tion on cru­el and unusual punishment.”