Alabama’s governor has set Nov. 21 as the execution date for what is expected to be the nation’s third death sentence carried out on a 17-year-old man. nitrogen gas.
Gov. Kay Ivey set the execution date for Carey Dale Grayson, 49, after the Alabama Supreme Court ruled last week that the execution could go ahead. Grayson was one of four teenagers convicted of the 1994 murder of Vickie Deblieux, 37, in Jefferson County.
Alabama executed Kenneth Smith in January, the nation’s first nitrogen gas execution. A second nitrogen gas execution is scheduled for September 26 for Alan Eugene MillerMiller recently reached an agreement with the state regarding the method of execution.
Alabama seeks additional nitrogen execution as disagreement persists over what happened in the first.
Nitrogen hypoxia is a process in which pure nitrogen gas or concentrations high enough to be lethal are inhaled until the person dies from asphyxiation. Veterinarians refuse to use nitrogen asphyxiation to euthanize animals because of its “distressing” effects and potential risks to people around them.
Smith shivered for several minutes on the death chamber gurney as he was executed Jan. 25. While Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall described the execution as “textbook,” inmates’ attorneys said it was the antithesis of the state’s prediction that nitrogen would ensure a quick, humane death.
Grayson filed a lawsuit to prevent the state from using the same protocol that was used to execute Smith. His lawyers argued that the method caused unconstitutional levels of pain and that Smith showed signs of “conscious suffocation.”
After Smith’s execution, Marshall said, “As of last night, nitrogen hypoxia as a means of execution is no longer an untested method. It is a proven method.”
Marshall said at the time that 43 other Alabama death row inmates had requested execution by nitrogen hypoxia.
Matt Schulz, an assistant federal public defender representing Grayson, said last week that they were disappointed that the execution was authorized before federal courts “had a chance to consider Mr. Grayson’s challenge to the constitutionality of Alabama’s current nitrogen protocol.”
Earlier this month, Miller entered into a “confidential settlement agreement” with the state to end his lawsuit over the details of the state’s nitrogen gas protocol. A spokesman for the Alabama Department of Corrections declined to say whether the state is making any procedural changes to Miller.
Grayson was accused of torturing and killing Deblieux on Feb. 21, 1994. Prosecutors said Deblieux was hitchhiking from Tennessee to her mother’s home in Louisiana when four teenagers, including Grayson, offered her a ride. They took her to a wooded area, assaulted and beat her and threw her off a cliff, prosecutors said. The teens then mutilated her body, prosecutors said.
Grayson, Kenny Loggins and Trace Duncan were all convicted and sentenced to death. However, Loggins and Duncan, who were under 18 at the time of the crime, had their death sentences overturned after the U.S. Supreme Court banned the execution of offenders who were under 18 at the time of the crime in 2005. Grayson was 19.
The fourth teenager was sentenced to life imprisonment.
