Alan Eugene Miller, the death row inmate Alabama tried to execute last month, is claiming in a new court filing that Alabama prison workers poked him with needles for over an hour before calling off the set execution.

Miller, 57, was set to be executed on Sept. 22 by the state of Alabama for his August 5, 1999 shooting spree that left three men dead at two businesses in Shelby County. But the lethal injection execution was called off minutes before midnight, when the state’s death warrant was set to expire.

The execution was called off at approximately 11:30 p.m. because Miller’s veins couldn’t be accessed within execution protocol time limits, Alabama Department of Corrections Commissioner John Hamm told reporters gathered at the prison system media center.

A document filed in Miller’s federal lawsuit on Friday gave his account of what happened the night of his set execution and detailed the many attempts Miller said people with the ADOC made to access his veins to start an intravenous line for the three-drug lethal injection cocktail.

According to the document, Miller is the only living execution survivor in the United States.

After repeated attempts to find a vein in Miller’s arms, hands, and feet, he claimed that the ADOC execution team started observing his neck for veins in an attempt to start a central line procedure.

Throughout his account of the evening, Miller describes the workers by the color of their scrubs. He said he was never told their names or their medical credentials.

“Navy Scrubs walked around Mr. Miller’s body and examined all the puncture sites that Green and Aqua Scrubs had made. Navy Scrubs then moved up to Mr. Miller’s head and started feeling and slapping the skin on his neck. Mr. Miller physically recoiled out of intense fear of the men trying to insert a needle in his neck. Mr. Miller asked urgently whether the men were going to try to insert a needle into his neck; all refused to answer him,” the document states.

“During Mr. Miller’s execution, exactly what he predicted came to pass—members of the IV team were not able to find a vein or establish IV access for the lethal drugs. Defendants stopped Mr. Miller’s botched execution shortly before midnight on September 22.”

The document, filed by Miller’s attorneys from the law firm Sidley Austin, states Miller’s account of the night he was set to die.

Miller claims he was taken into the execution chamber around 10:15 p.m., and was strapped down on the gurney. Two men then walked into the room, both wearing scrubs and neither identifying themselves. The man wearing green scrubs tied a torniquet on Miller’s right bicep, and slapped Mr. Miller’s inner right arm inside his elbow “for long periods of time.” The other man, wearing aqua scrubs, “punctured Mr. Miller’s right elbow pit in multiple different points trying to find a vein. Mr. Miller could feel the needle being injected into his skin, and then turned in various directions, as Aqua Scrubs tried to place the needle inside a vein. This process was painful and traumatic for Mr. Miller,” the filing states.

After repeated attempts with no success in finding a vein, the two men moved to Miller’s right hand. Their efforts there also failed after the worker in aqua scrubs punctured Miller’s skin with a needle several times. The men then moved to Miller’s left hand, and determined that location wouldn’t work, either.

The workers next tried Miller’s left elbow pit. “Mr. Miller felt the needles go deeper in his body than ever before, which caused intense physical pain,” Miller claims in the filing. “The men were ultimately unable to find a vein in the left elbow pit despite puncturing Mr. Miller several times in that location.”

After not locating a vein in his upper body, the men moved on to Miller’s right foot. “But as soon as they inserted a needle into the foot, Mr. Miller knew something was wrong because he felt a sudden and severe pain. Mr. Miller felt like he had been electrocuted, and his entire body shook in the restraints. Mr. Miller believes the men hit a nerve in his right foot. The men withdrew the needle from this painful site, and continued to puncture many other locations on Mr. Miller’s right foot,” the document states.

That effort was abadoned, as was an effort to try on Miller’s left foot and leg. The next attempt for starting an IV was in Miller’s right forearm arm.

“With time dragging on and no success in finding a vein, Aqua and Green Scrubs decided to split up, and each began working on puncturing different parts of Mr. Miller’s body. Aqua Scrubs began puncturing Mr. Miller’s left arm, while Green Scrubs began puncturing Mr. Miller’s right arm,” the filing states.

A third man entered the room, who Miller identified as wearing navy scrubs, and began examining Miller’s neck. “Very soon after Mr. Miller recoiled from Navy Scrubs, there was a loud knock on the window pane that borders the execution chamber and the State’s observation room. All three men in scrubs left the execution chamber after hearing this knock,” the filing states.

Miller estimates he was left hanging vertically on the gurney for about 20 minutes, experiencing “significant pain” after the attempts to find a vein for the past 90 minutes. “Mr. Miller felt nauseous, disoriented, confused, and fearful about whether he was about to be killed, and was deeply disturbed by his view of state employees silently staring at him from the observation room while he was hanging vertically from the gurney,” according to the motion.

Just before midnight, Miller said Katrina Brown entered the execution chamber and told Miller his execution was postponed. Brown currently works as Warden II at Julia Tutwiler women’s prison, according to the ADOC website.

“Mr. Miller’s arms were so stiff and painful from having been extended above his head for 90-plus minutes that he was not able to bend them on his own,” the filing says. “Mr. Miller had to ask one of the guards to bend his arms for him. Mr. Miller was not able to get off the table immediately, and had to try to restore circulation to his limbs himself.”

He was returned to his execution holding cell “in a deep state of shock and post-traumatic stress.”

“Mr. Miller curled into a fetal position on the cot in the execution holding cell for most of the early morning hours of September 23. He has been experiencing profound post-traumatic stress and other psychological and physical symptoms since the botched execution,” the filing says.

Earlier this week, the Alabama Attorney General’s Office asked the Alabama Supreme Court to set another execution date for Miller.

“This is an extremely rare example of civil litigation in which the (state) can kill the main witness to the events giving rise to the legal claims at issue. (The state) clearly intend to take full advantage of that possibility,” Miller’s team says.

Miller’s attorneys, in an amended complaint in the lawsuit, also asks the judge to bar the state from executing Miller by any method other than nitrogen hypoxia. He is also asking for monetary damages “caused by the pain and suffering Defendants (Holman warden Terry) Raybon and (ADOC Commissioner John) Hamm inflicted on Mr. Miller during his cruel and unusual botched execution, and by their intent to repeat the same cruel procedure on Mr. Miller in the near future.”

A federal judge has ordered the Alabama Department of Corrections to preserve all evidence from the failed execution.

Miller’s new allegations of what happened during the failed execution come in a lawsuit he has been fighting for weeks, centering on his claims that in June 2018, he completed a form distributed to death row inmates at Holman electing to die by the state’s newly approved method of execution, nitrogen hypoxia, instead of the default method of lethal injection. The AG’s Office argued there is no record of that form being submitted, and that he should be executed using lethal injection instead. A judge in the Middle District of Alabama ruled in favor of Miller, halting the execution, and a federal appeals court agreed.

On the night Miller was set to die, however, the U.S. Supreme Court granted the state’s application to vacate the injunction, clearing the way for Alabama to execute Miller via lethal injection at approximately 9:08 p.m. The high court did not issue an opinion on the case.

Miller was sent to Alabama Death Row after he was convicted of shooting the three men at his current and former places of work in 1999 – Holdbrooks, 32; Yancy, 28; and Jarvis, 39. Holdbrooks and Yancy were employees of Ferguson Enterprises, while Jarvis worked for Post Airgas in Pelham.

Read the new court filing below. This post will be updated with more details.