The 2022 Alabama Executions and the Crisis of American Capital Punishment

By Alexandra Klein

The Death Penalty Information Center described 2022 as “the year of the botched execution” in its 2022 Annual Report. Alabama’s execution errors were especially serious: it attempted to execute four people, botched three of its four executions, and ultimately called off two executions. Alabama’s 2022 executions and its errors are the culmination of common problems in capital punishment across the United States. A full understanding of capital punishment requires an analysis of individual cases, including executions, and analysis of how that case fits within the system of capital punishment. Evaluating a single case may reveal unfairness and arbitrariness, but tracking those trends across multiple cases demonstrates broader system failures. Alabama’s 2022 executions present a useful case study for understanding the flaws in execution practices and capital punishment more broadly.

This Article documents the 2022 Alabama executions and makes three contributions. First, it summarizes the events in Alabama surrounding the executions of Matthew Reeves and Joe James, and the failed executions of Alan Miller and Kenneth Smith. It reviews some issues associated with each capital sentence and appeals process. Second, it explores points of commonality among each of the four cases: non-unanimous jury sentencing and judicial overrides, inadequate legal representation and resources, the role the Supreme Court played in the cases, and the problems associated with Alabama’s execution protocols. Finally, it addresses the outcome of Alabama’s decision to suspend executions and offers recommendations intended to protect the Eighth Amendment rights of people facing executions if Alabama’s elected officials are unwilling to take the necessary step to abolish the death penalty.

The problems this Article describes are not unique to Alabama, but events in Alabama afford an opportunity to bring fresh scrutiny to these issues. The Supreme Court’s willingness to authorize executions regardless of the merits of an individual case makes it more likely that errors like this will continue to happen. Alabama is not the whole story of 2022’s botched executions, but what happened in Alabama illustrates just how pointlessly cruel the process of capital punishment is.

24 Nev. L.J., Forthcoming, 2024.