The Alabama Death Row inmate set to die by lethal injection in two weeks currently has two federal lawsuits pending, one challenging the state’s execution method and another arguing his innocence.
Jamie Mills, 50, is set to die by Alabama’s three-drug lethal injection cocktail on May 30 at William C. Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore.
Mills and his then-wife, JoAnn Mills, were convicted in the June 2004 beating deaths of Floyd and Vera Hill. The elderly couple were beaten with a machete, a ball-peen hammer, and a tire iron at their Marion County home before, prosecutors said, the Mills stole cash and prescription medication.
He’s represented by lawyers with the Equal Justice Initiative, who have been seeking relief through different lawsuits.
Mills’ two federal lawsuits are pending in the Middle District Court and the Northern District Court of Alabama, under two separate federal judges.
In his Northern District claim, Mills argued his wife who testified against him in 2007 only did so because of a prearranged plea agreement that would spare her the death penalty.
Last month, Mills’ lawyers filed a motion asking a federal judge to reopen his case, arguing “newly discovered evidence calls into question not only the reliability of the capital trial verdict in this case, but also the integrity” of the court.
Mills’ lawyers pointed to a new affidavit from JoAnn Mills’ former attorney. That attorney said that in 2007, prior to either of the Mills facing trial for capital murder, he met with the then-district attorney and the victims’ family. At that meeting, the attorney said, the DA agreed to let JoAnn Mills plead guilty to the lesser charge of murder and avoid the death penalty in exchange for her testimony against her husband.
Prosecutors from Marion County and the Alabama Attorney General’s Office have long argued there was no deal in place before JoAnn Mills took the stand.
But Mills’ lawyers argue that he was convicted primarily based on JoAnn Mills’ testimony. While the victims’ blood and DNA was found on clothes—which had Mills name on the tags—was found in Mills’ car. The murder weapons did not have Mills DNA present, and his lawyers have argued the items could have been put in the trunk without either Jamie Mills’, or his wife’s, knowledge.
“This is a case primarily built on the testimony of a single witness: JoAnn Mills,” said the filing. “Without her testimony, the State’s case was very weak. The physical evidence was consistent with Mr. Mills’ theory of defense that he was innocent and being framed by (a man who is referred to as a “local drug user”) who was identified as a suspect in the murders and arrested with the victims’ pills and a large amount of cash.”
That man had access to the car on the day of the murders, Mills argued.
But the state replied that Mills’ lawyers have argued about the supposed plea agreement for 17 years and have only now spoken to JoAnn Mills’ former attorney. The AG’s Office still argues there was no prearranged deal for JoAnn Mills and called the filing “untimely and meritless.”
”Jamie Mills brutally murdered Floyd and Vera Hill after he and his common law wife, JoAnn Mills, went to the elderly couple’s home with the intent to rob them one afternoon in June 2004. Three years later, JoAnn testified against Mills in his capital murder trial, offering graphic testimony of what he did to the victims and what the two of them did thereafter in an effort to cover their tracks.”
Prosecutors said that after Mills’ conviction and death sentence, the Hill family was satisfied with JoAnn Mills getting a lesser sentence “because of the remorse she showed.” She pleaded guilty to murder and was sentenced to life in prison. She will be eligible for parole in 2027.
Lethal injection suit
In Mills’ other lawsuit, his lawyers argued that he “is at imminent risk of being subjected to an unnecessarily prolonged and torturous execution process at the hands of State officials with unreviewable authority, without the presence of counsel or access to the courts.”
Mills is set to die by lethal injection after he didn’t opt-into the state’s new execution method, using nitrogen gas, when inmates had the opportunity to do so in June 2018.
That lawsuit points to the most recent lethal injections and the two that were aborted in 2022 after the state ran out of time to start an intravenous line for the lethal injection.
His lawsuit is asking for his lawyers to be present during the process when execution team members from the prison start the IV—which typically only prison officials are present for.
The state argued that case should also be dismissed.
To prevent Mills from being on the gurney longer than necessary, the state said prison officials “affirm that Mills will not be taken to the execution chamber until any stays of execution are lifted, and should a stay be granted while he is in the chamber, he will be removed from the gurney and returned to the holding cell.”
“The Hills deserved far better deaths than the bloody end Mills gave Floyd and the protracted death in hospice that Vera endured. His efforts at gamesmanship through untimely last-minute litigation should not be rewarded.”