In Alabama’s third nitrogen hypoxia execution this year, an inmate convicted of a 1994 murder passed away on Thursday.
Concerns regarding the potential for protracted suffering and whether there is an unlawful danger of more pain are still raised by the new execution technique, which entails breathing only nitrogen gas through a mask while being deprived of oxygen.
However, a federal appeals court last week dismissed the convicted man’s attorneys’ claims, allowing 50-year-old Carey Dale Grayson to be executed.
The governor’s office reports that Grayson was put to death at 6:33 p.m. in the state prison in Atmore for the kidnapping and murder of Vickie Deblieux, a hitchhiker, when he was 19 and his three co-defendants were under 18.
After the U.S. Supreme Court declared that the death penalty for his co-defendants was unconstitutional, the death sentences were subsequently changed to life imprisonment.
In his farewell remarks, Grayson expressed his regret for the terrible crime he had committed and his 30-year repentance. According to his attorney, Kacey Keeton, he has expressed regret and hopes that everyone would pardon him.
According to Keeton, Grayson also discussed his dissatisfaction with the jail system and accused the administration of committing murder, referring to them as serial killers.
When Grayson cursed at the warden, jail staff cut the microphone, preventing witnesses from hearing his final words.
In their petitions, demonstrators urged Alabama Governor Kay Ivey to stop Grayson’s execution. When asked about the state’s execution one week prior to Thanksgiving, she told the Montgomery Advertiser this month, “Did Carey Grayson give any consideration to the fact that he robbed Vickie Deblieux and her family of now 30 Thanksgivings?” Her office did not reply to a request for comment, but she was not expected to step in.
After the execution, the governor’s office issued a statement stating that Ivey “told Corrections Commissioner John Hamm that she would not exercise her clemency powers in this case and directed him to proceed with Mr. Grayson’s lawfully imposed death sentence.”
“Even after her death, Mr. Grayson s crimes against Ms. DeBlieux were heinous, unimaginable, without an ounce of regard for human life and just unexplainably mean,” Ivey said in a statement. “An execution by nitrogen hypoxia bares no comparison to the death and dismemberment Ms. DeBlieux experienced.”
Justice has been served, according to a statement released Thursday by Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall. He also said, “My prayer for Vickie’s family is that they can find solace in the State of Alabama finally serving justice for their heartbreaking loss.”
On Tuesday, Grayson’s attorneys filed an appeal with the U.S. Supreme Court, arguing that his case “raises issues of national importance” among states that have the death penalty regarding “whether the Eighth Amendment prohibits suffocating a conscious prisoner and whether a state’s refusal to prevent conscious suffocation via a novel method of execution superadds terror and pain in violation of the Eighth Amendment.”
In the past, the high court has generally refused to step in and stop executions at the last minute. When Alabama executed Kenneth Smith, the first person in the United States to die in a nitrogen gas execution, in January and Alan Miller in a second nitrogen gas execution in September, the state refused to comply.
The victims seemed to fight as they were strapped to gurneys and given nitrogen, according to eyewitness accounts of both executions. According to reports, Miller, 59, strained against his bindings and gasped intermittently for around six minutes, while Smith, 58, did not pass out as quickly as anticipated and looked to shake and writhe for two minutes.
Alabama first attempted to execute the men by lethal injection in both cases, but the procedures were shelved after inmate staff failed to successfully set up intravenous lines.
Following a string of troublesome lethal injection executions, Alabama officials decided to halt the technique in 2022 and conduct a reassessment before resuming it last year. Since then, in addition to lethal injection, Alabama has been the first state to create a nitrogen hypoxia execution process.
The state still uses lethal injection, although convicted prisoners have the option of nitrogen hypoxia or, in certain situations, electrocution.
Prior to the establishment of a procedure, Grayson had selected nitrogen hypoxia.
Twice, the nitrogen protocol implemented by the State of Alabama has failed to deliver on its promises. They are continuing to use the same strategy on Thursday, according to Grayson’s attorney John Palombi, rather than adopting the common sense course of action and resolving the issue.
“Mr. Grayson’s execution ought to be halted, and the protocol ought to be thoroughly, impartially, and openly examined,” he continued.
Human rights organizations have expressed worry over the use of nitrogen as states search for practical substitutes for fatal injection, a technique that has grown more challenging due to a lack of the required medications.
According to medical professionals, nitrogen is a naturally occurring gas that is colorless and odorless. If it is not combined with adequate oxygen, it can have bodily adverse effects like vomiting, breathing difficulties, and even death.
According to specialists, if a tiny quantity of oxygen enters an inmate’s mask while they are breathing nitrogen during an execution, it could cause gradual asphyxiation and lengthen the time it takes for them to pass away.
Palombi raised questions during his arguments before the appeals court panel this week regarding Smith and Miller’s duration of consciousness when their bodies responded to the operation.
“I would submit to the court that being conscious and being suffocated for a period of time constitutes terror that is superadded to this protocol that does not have to be there, as acknowledged by the fact that the state is willing to, if he requests it, give Mr. Grayson a sedative,” Palombi, who works for the Federal Defenders Program, said.
Palombi’s opinion was disputed by Robert Overing, the deputy solicitor general for Alabama, who argued that nitrogen hypoxia is not comparable to suffocating “like drowning or smothering with a plastic bag or paralyzing the lungs.”
“This is really apples and oranges trying to use the term ‘suffocation’ to evoke a sense of fear and pain that doesn’t exist with this method,” Overing said in court.
Grayson became Alabama’s sixth execution victim this year.
Prosecutors claim that in February 1994, he and three young friends—Kenny Loggins, Trace Duncan, and Louis Mangione—were under the influence of narcotics and alcohol when they came across 37-year-old Deblieux, who was traveling through Alabama on her way to Louisiana to visit her mother.
According to court documents, they hurled Deblieux from a cliff, beat her, and disfigured her body, including chopping off her fingers. Prosecutors claim that once Mangione showed pals Deblieux’s finger, they were connected to the crime.
Mangione, who was 16 at the time of the murder, received a life sentence, while Grayson, who was 19 at the time, received a death sentence. Both Loggins and Duncan, who were 17 at the time, had their death sentences commuted to life in prison.
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