By DON FLETCHER
News Staff Writer
An execution date has been set for a man who is said to be mentally disturbed, but not enough to justify a Shelby County shooting rampage that left three people dead almost 23 years ago.
The Alabama Supreme Court announced recently that Alan Eugene Miller, 57, is scheduled to die by lethal injection on September 22 for the August 5, 1999, fatal shootings of Lee Holdbrooks and Scott Yancy, who were killed at Ferguson Enterprises in Pelham, where Miller worked as a truck driver, and Terry Jarvis who was killed at Post Airgas, where Miller formerly worked.
According to court documents, Miller believed the men were spreading rumors about him, including one by Jarvis that he was gay. An Associated Press report indicated that a psychiatrist testified that Miller was mentally ill, but his condition wasn’t bad enough to basis an insanity defense upon.
The U.S. Supreme Court refused in October an appeal by Miller, who claims that no aggravating circumstances that made him eligible for the death penalty were specified during his trial, that the judge improperly instructed jurors and that he had ineffective legal counsel.
If the execution is carried out, Miller will be the third Alabama Death Row inmate to pay the ultimate price for his crimes this year. Matthew Reeves was executed in January for the 1996 murder of a Selma man, and Joe Nathan James Jr. was executed in July for the 1994 murder of his former girlfriend in Birmingham.