Timing of Alabama inmate Jamie Mills’ lethal injection lawsuit ‘inexplicable and inexcusable’: Judge

Another federal judge has rejected a request by Alabama inmate Jamie Ray Mills to stay his execution, writing the inmate’s lawyers’ delay in seeking a preliminary injunction was “inexplicable and inexcusable.”

“The practice of filing lawsuits and requests for stay of execution at the last minute where the facts were known well in advance is ineffective, unworkable, and must stop,” said Chief U.S. District Judge Emily Marks of Montgomery.

The lethal injection of Mills is set for 6 p.m. on May 30 at William C. Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore, in south Alabama. Mills, 50, has been fighting to get a stay of execution in two separate federal lawsuits. Another federal judge, Scott Coogler, denied his request on Friday in a separate case.

On Tuesday, Marks also denied Mills’ ask for a stay. In that case, Mills’ lawyers from the Equal Justice Initiative had argued the execution could be “torturous.”

Mills’ lawyers had asked the judge to issue a stay of execution or to prohibit the state from doing several things: putting him on the gurney while his lawsuits are still pending, restraining him on the gurney “without legitimate reason,” not letting his lawyers in the execution chamber while his intravenous lines are set up, and denying his lawyers access to a phone line while inside the prison.

At a hearing in the case last week, Alabama Department of Corrections Commissioner John Hamm said Mills would not be taken to the execution chamber if a stay was in place, and that Mills would be removed from the execution chamber one was issued.

“These assurances did not assuage Mills’ concerns about his upcoming execution, and accordingly, he still seeks the injunctive relief requested in his motion,” wrote the judge.

Marks wrote that Mills showed an “inexcusable delay” that “weighs heavily against the equitable remedy of an injunction or stay.” Some of his claims “should have been brought several years ago,” she wrote.

“Since 2022, many events have occurred which should have triggered action by Mills, and yet he did not act,” the judge wrote, citing the aborted lethal injection attempts of Alan Miller and Kenneth Smith in the fall of 2022, and the controversial execution of Joe Nathan James that summer.

“A reasonably diligent plaintiff likely could and should have filed suit after Kenneth Smith’s execution attempt in November 2022, as that was the third lethal injection execution or attempted execution which allegedly involved the condemned inmate being strapped to the gurney for an extended period,” the judge wrote.

She continued that after the last few inmates in Alabama were executed, and after other movement in Mills’ various appeals, Mills’ lawyers “still did nothing” and “offers no reasonable explanation” as to why.

Marks also mentioned that the state has “made meaningful changes” to its lethal injection process, including replacing the IV team.

“The Court acknowledges that lawyers representing death row inmates set to be executed unquestionably owe a duty to their clients. However, these lawyers are also officers of the court,” the judge wrote.

“The act of filing a civil action and then a request for injunctive relief after unjustified delay often appears to be legal manipulation rather than genuine legal advocacy.”