NEWS: U.S.The execution of a man who killed three people in a workplace shooting in Alabama has been postponed due to time and medical problems

Alaba­ma offi­cials on Thurs­day post­poned the lethal injec­tion of a man con­vict­ed of a 1999 work­place shoot­ing, cit­ing issues with tim­ing and access to the inmate’s veins.

Alaba­ma State Pen­i­ten­tiary Com­mis­sion­er Jon Hamm has announced that the sched­uled exe­cu­tion of Alan Miller has been called off after he deter­mined that the lethal injec­tion could not begin before midnight.

Prison offi­cials made the deci­sion around 11:30 p.m.

The last-minute adjourn­ment came about three hours after the split Supreme Court allowed exe­cu­tions to begin.

“Due to time con­straints result­ing from judi­cial delays, the exe­cu­tion was sus­pend­ed when it was deter­mined that the veins of those on death row could not be accessed in accor­dance with our pro­to­col before the death war­rant expired. ’ said Ham. Enforce­ment forces have begun attempt­ing to estab­lish venous access, but it is uncer­tain how long this will last.

Miller was returned to a reg­u­lar cell in a South Alaba­ma prison.

Miller was sen­tenced to death after killing three peo­ple in a work­place attack in 1999.

The rul­ing, 5 to 4, over­turned an injunc­tion issued by a fed­er­al judge and upheld by the 11th Court of Appeals block­ing Miller’s exe­cu­tion. Miller’s attor­neys say the state lost doc­u­ments request­ing that his exe­cu­tion be car­ried out under the nitro­gen hypox­ia method. This method is legal­ly avail­able, but has nev­er been used in the Unit­ed States.

When Alaba­ma approved nitro­gen hypox­ia as an exe­cu­tion method in 2018, state law gave inmates a short win­dow to des­ig­nate it as an exe­cu­tion method.

Miller tes­ti­fied that four years ago he had sub­mit­ted papers select­ing nitro­gen hypox­ia as the method of exe­cu­tion, placed the papers in the cell door slot at the Hol­man Cor­rec­tion­al Cen­ter, and had prison offi­cers receive them.

U.S. Dis­trict Judge R. Austin Huf­fak­er Jr. ruled Tues­day that Miller “prob­a­bly turned in his elec­tion papers in a time­ly man­ner, even though the state says he has no phys­i­cal record,” issued a pro­vi­sion­al injunc­tion bar­ring Miller from being killed by any method oth­er than nitro­gen hypoxia.

Pros­e­cu­tors say Miller, a deliv­ery truck dri­ver, mur­dered his co-work­ers Lee Hold­brooks and Scott Yancey at a busi­ness office out­side Birm­ing­ham, and killed his for­mer boss at the busi­ness where Miller pre­vi­ous­ly worked announced that he had shot and killed Ter­ry Jarvis.

Each man was shot mul­ti­ple times and Miller was caught after a road chase.