Doyle Hamm

An arrest photo of Doyle Hamm from February 1981.

Doyle Hamm grew up in northwest Alabama and was the tenth of twelve children.[2] While he was growing up, Hamm's father and each of his six older brothers spent time in jail.[2] In an interview, one of Hamm's sisters described their childhood home as “constant hell all the time” and recalled that her father told his children that “If you don’t go out and steal, then you’re not a Hamm.”[2] From an early age, Hamm struggled in school. Tests and report cards indicated that, in the fifth grade, Hamm was still reading in at a first-grade level.[2] Hamm dropped out of school during the ninth grade and began abusing drugs and alcohol.[2]

At the age of twenty, Hamm was arrested and charged with robbery after a drunken fight in a bar parking lot. Hamm entered a guilty plea and was sentenced to five years in prison.[2] Years later, the alleged victim confessed that no robbery had ever taken place and Hamm's court-appointed attorney admitted that he had been “too busy and overworked to give this case the time and attention it needed.”[2] Hamm was arrested other times for burglary, assault, and grand larceny.

In January 1987, Hamm went on a crime spree that culminated in a motel robbery and the murder of Patrick Cunningham, a nighttime clerk at the motel.[3][4] $350 was taken from the motel's cash register and Cunningham was shot once in the temple. Hamm was arrested and charged with capital murder.[4]

Two individuals claiming to be witnesses to the crime initially identified Hamm as the gunman during the robbery, but soon recanted their testimony. Those individuals were later charged as co-defendants and took deals to testify as state witnesses.[5] During questioning, Hamm confessed to committing the robbery.

In February 2014, Hamm, who was still on death row, was diagnosed with lymphatic and cranial cancer.[10] Doctors discovered a large malignant tumor behind his left eye and determined that Hamm suffered from B-cell lymphoma.[10] Doctors also discovered “numerous abnormal lymph nodes” in Hamm's abdomen, lungs, and chest.[10]

Hamm underwent years of cancer treatment, including radiation therapy, but the treatments did not eliminate the cancer entirely and, by late 2017, Hamm's cancer had worsened.[10][11] By late 2017, Hamm was suffering from inflamed lymph nodes in his neck, chest, and abdomen, symptoms which are associated with worsening lymphoma. Hamm's swollen lymph nodes were observed by multiple independent medical examiners.[10][11] A surgery to remove a cancerous lesion on Hamm's cheek that was eating through bone and tissue was canceled on December 13, 2017, the date it was scheduled to be performed, when the Alabama Supreme Court handed down Hamm's death warrant and scheduled an execution for a few months later.[10]

In September 2017, when an anesthesiologist came to visit Hamm for a medical examination, he was prohibited from bringing his medical equipment past the prison security and the doctor was forced to use Hamm's lawyer's tie as a tourniquet.[3] Andrew Cohen, a fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice noted that Hamm's case symbolizes the injustice of Alabama's death penalty system. Cohen observed that “the idea that executioners want to make sure they kill Hamm before he dies of cancer, the fact that it is likely the lethal injection itself will cause him "needless pain" before he dies, may be abhorrent but it's entirely consistent with the way state officials have handled Hamm's case for years.”[11]

In addition to cancer, Hamm suffered from Hepatitis C and had a history of intravenous drug use that made it more difficult to access his veins.[12][13][14]

On December 13, 2017, the Alabama Supreme Court set Hamm’s execution date for Thursday, February 22, 2018.[4]

On January 31, 2018, Chief Judge Karen O. Bowdre issued a stay of execution, finding that Hamm had shown a substantial likelihood that he would suffer irreparable injury if the execution were to go forward.[15] In an order released on February 6, Chief Judge Bowdre ordered an independent medical examination of Hamm, finding that a medical examination was necessary in order to determine whether “Alabama's lethal injection protocol "presents a risk that is sure or very likely to cause serious illness and needless suffering, and give rise to sufficiently imminent dangers.[15]

Alabama appealed the district court’s order and, on February 13, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals vacated the stay and ordered the district court to immediately appoint an independent medical examiner and schedule an independent medical examination.[16][17] The medical examination found that Hamm’s arms and hands were unusable, but his “lower extremities” were usable.

In the weeks leading up to Hamm's executions, human rights experts from the United Nations called on Alabama to halt Hamm's execution.[18] The Special Rapporteurs expressed concern that the execution could amount to cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment or punishment, and possibly torture. The Special Rapporteurs also expressed concern that Hamm did not receive a fair trial.[18]

Sister Helen Prejean, an anti-death penalty advocate, frequently spoke out about Hamm's execution and expressed concern that the execution would “go horribly wrong."[19] Prejean described Alabama's decision to execute Hamm despite his cancer as “especially inhumane.”[19] On February 20, two days before Hamm's execution was scheduled to take place, former New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson and the International Commission Against the Death Penalty authored an open letter to Alabama Governor Kay Ivey expressing serious concern over Hamm's scheduled execution.[20] On February 6, Hamm's attorney petitioned Governor Ivey to grant Hamm clemency. Included in Hamm's clemency petition were letters of support from family and friends, faith leaders, and community members. The Human Rights Center of the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro also wrote a letter in support of clemency.[21]

On February 21, the day prior to Hamm's scheduled execution, a group of lawyers and former judges wrote a letter to Governor Ivey, urging her not to go ahead with Hamm's execution. The group, which included former Alabama Supreme Court Justice Ernest “Sonny” Hornsby, former Court of Criminal Appeals Judge William Bowen, and two former presidents of the Alabama State Bar, warned “the prospect of the prolonged, agonizing execution of a very sick cancer patient cannot be a desirable one for anyone in our State, even those who support retention of the death penalty in general.[21] The jurists raised the prospect that Hamm’s impending execution could turn out to be like the botched execution of Clayton Lockett, which would draw “grotesque international attention” to Alabama and its execution practices.[21]

On February 20, two days before Hamm's execution was scheduled to take place, Chief Judge Bowdre issued an order allowing the execution to take place. At 12:30 on February 22, the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals denied Hamm's request for a stay of execution, prompting Hamm's counsel to appeal the decision to the United States Supreme Court.

At 6:00 PM on February 22, the Supreme Court issued a temporary stay of execution as it considered Hamm's claims.[22][23][24] Almost three hours later, at approximately 8:40, the Supreme Court lifted the temporary stay and denied Hamm's petition for a stay of execution.[22][23] Justices Ginsburg and Sotomayor dissented from the court's denial and noted that the method of execution that Alabama had devised in order to execute Hamm despite his cancer and venous access issues has “never been tried before in Alabama.”[25]

During the course of the execution attempt, correctional officers spent two and a half hours inserting needles into Hamm's legs and ankles, trying to get venous access. The execution team turned Hamm on his stomach and slapped the back of his legs in attempt to find a usable vein.[3] When attempts at peripheral venous access failed, members of the execution team began inserting needles into Hamm's groin in the hopes of finding a vein. During this process, Hamm was stabbed a half-dozen times, with needles puncturing his bladder and penetrating his femoral artery.[16] In the days following the execution attempt, Hamm's blood contained urine as a result of the punctured bladder.[26] During the execution, a large amount of blood accumulated around Hamm's groin, soaking through the pad he was laying on and requiring the execution team to replace it.[27] The large amount of blood led to speculation that the executioner had also punctured Hamm's femoral artery.[3][26]

When the execution was finally called off, Hamm collapsed as he was removed from the gurney.[3] During a visit with his defense counsel the following day, Hamm was limping and sore and was described by his attorney as “a shadow of himself.”[3] Hamm became only the third person in the United States since 1946 to walk out of the execution chamber still alive.[28] In a press conference following the execution attempt, Jeff Dunn, Commissioner of the Alabama Department of Corrections told reporters “I wouldn’t necessarily characterize what we had tonight as a problem.”[16]

The New York Times described the botched execution as “ghoulish proceedings.”[16] Sara Totonchi, executive director of the Southern Center for Human Rights described the event as “unconscionable,” adding that the “attempted execution clearly demonstrates the cruelty and the torture of the death penalty.”[29] The editorial board of a local newspaper in Alabama described the attempted execution as “torture in Alabama’s death chamber.”[30] In a report submitted to the federal court, the doctor who examined Hamm after the attempted execution wrote that, during the execution, Hamm wished for death “because he preferred to die rather than to continue to experience the ongoing severe pain.”[31]

On March 5, 2018, Hamm and his attorney filed an amended civil rights lawsuit against the Alabama Department of Corrections. The lawsuit alleged that a second execution attempt would violate Hamm's Fifth, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendment rights. Hamm also alleged that a second execution attempt would violate 42 U.S.C. § 1983, a federal law prohibiting the deprivation of civil rights.[32] In the immediate aftermath of the execution attempt, the Alabama Attorney General's Office would not comment on whether it would seek a second execution attempt.[28]

On March 26, 2018, a little over a month after the attempted execution, Hamm and the state of Alabama reached a confidential settlement.[33] The settlement “resolved all of the state and federal litigation” that was still pending in the case at the time and ended the efforts by Alabama to set a second execution date for Hamm.[34][35]

In a press conference announcing that Oklahoma would move forward with executions by inert gas inhalation, Joe Allbaugh, the Director of the Oklahoma Department of Corrections, described the attempt to execute Hamm as "inhumane."[32][36]

Following Hamm's attempted execution, the Associated Press and other news outlets requested the state's execution protocol and related records.[37][38] The state initially denied the request, claiming that the execution protocol was secret. A district court ordered that that state could not keep its protocol secret and had to disclose the requested records. In March 2019, a three-judge panel of the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the district court's ruling.[37][38] The Eleventh Circuit wrote that “The fact that Alabama zealously guards information about a matter of great public concern does not tip the scales against disclosure. The court concludes that the considerations in favor of unsealing the records greatly outweigh Alabama’s interest in maintaining secrecy.”[38]

The events surrounding Alabama's attempt to execute Hamm were recounted in a Supreme Court brief that was filed in Bucklew v. Precythe, a 2019 Supreme Court case concerning the death penalty.[39] The brief was filed on behalf of former federal and state judges, prosecutors, and law enforcement officials, who were urging the Supreme Court to prohibit the execution of Russell Bucklew.[39]

• Romell Broom
• Capital punishment in Alabama