An Alabama inmate cursed at a prison warden and made obscene gestures with his hands shortly before he was executed in the nation’s third execution using nitrogen gas in the 1994 murder of a female hitchhiker. were
Carrie Dale Grayson, 50, was executed at the William C. Holman Correctional Facility in south Alabama. He was one of four young men convicted at the time of killing 37-year-old Vicki DeBleux as she drove through Alabama on her way to her mother’s home in Louisiana. The woman was attacked, beaten and thrown off a cliff.
Inmates executed by nitrogen gas in Alabama, first in nation in 42 years by new method
Strapped to a gurney with a blue gas mask over his face, Grayson raised both his middle fingers and cursed at the prison warden. When the prison warden asked for his final statement, Grayson responded with an obscenity. The warden turned off the microphone. Grayson appeared to address the witness room with state officials.
Abe Bonowitz of Death Penalty Action leads a protest outside the Capitol in Montgomery, Ala., on Monday against Alabama’s proposed death penalty using nitrogen gas. (Kim Chandler/Associated Press)
It was not clear when the gas started flowing. Grayson shook and pulled against the restraints of the gurney. His legs, wrapped in a cloak, immediately rose from the gurney in the air. He then clenched his fists and appeared to struggle to try to signal again, then gasped for several minutes before settling.
Grayson was pronounced dead at 6:33 p.m.
Alabama began using nitrogen gas in some executions earlier this year. The procedure involves placing a breathing gas mask over the person’s face to replace the breathing air with pure nitrogen gas, causing death from lack of oxygen.
The execution came hours after the US Supreme Court stayed Grayson’s appeal. His lawyers had argued that further scrutiny was needed before the method could be used again.
Deblieux’s mutilated body was found at the bottom of a bluff near Odenville, Alabama on February 26, 1994. She was driving from Chattanooga, Tennessee, to her mother’s home in West Monroe, Louisiana, when four young men offered her a ride. Prosecutors said the youth took her to a forested area and assaulted and beat her. They threw him off a cliff and later returned to mutilate his body.
A medical examiner testified that DeBleux’s face was so fractured that it was identified by an earlier X-ray of his spine. Investigators said the teenagers were identified as suspects after one of them showed a friend DW’s severed fingers and bragged about the murder.
Gov. Kay Ivey released a statement minutes after Thursday’s execution saying she was praying for the slaying victim’s loved ones to find closure and healing decades after the crime.
Carrie Dale Grayson (Alabama Department of Corrections via AP)
“Nearly thirty years ago, Vicky DeBleux’s journey home to her mother and, ultimately, her life, was cut horribly short by Carrie Grayson and three other men. She sensed something was wrong, to escape. tried, but instead, was brutally tortured and killed,” Ivey said in the statement.
Grayson’s crimes were “heinous, unimaginable, without an ounce of regard for human life and had only inexplicable meaning. Death by execution by nitrogen hypoxia (Balow) and dismemberment are no comparison,” Ms. de Bleux said. What,” he added.
Grayson was the only one of the four teenagers to face the death penalty because the other teens were under 18 at the time of the murder. Grayson was 19. Two of the teenagers were initially sentenced to death but those sentences were stayed after the Supreme Court banned the execution of convicts who were under 18 at the time of their crimes. Another young man involved in Deblieux’s murder was sentenced to life in prison.
Grayson’s final appeals centered on a demand for further examination of the nitrogen gas method. His lawyers argued that the man suffered from “conscious asphyxiation” and that the first two nitrogen injections did not result in rapid unconsciousness and death as the state had promised. Attorneys for the Alabama attorney general’s office asked the judges to let the execution go forward, saying a lower court found Grayson’s claims to be speculative.
Alabama says the procedure is constitutional. But critics — citing how the first two men who were executed were shaken for several minutes — say the procedure needs further scrutiny, especially if other states follow Alabama’s path.
“The normalization of gas asphyxiation as a method of execution is deeply troubling,” said Abraham Bonowitz, executive director of Death Penalty Action, a group that seeks to end the death penalty.
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No state except Alabama used nitrogen hypoxia to carry out the death penalty. In 2018, Alabama became the third state — along with Oklahoma and Mississippi — to allow the use of nitrogen gas to execute prisoners.
Some states are looking for new ways to execute prisoners because the drugs used in lethal injection, the most common execution method in the United States, are becoming harder to find.
