The governor of Alabama has set November 21 as the date for the third execution by nitrogen gas in the United States that day.
The date for Carey Dale Grayson’s execution was set by Gov. Kay Ivey after the Alabama Supreme Court said last week that it could happen. Grayson is 49 years old. Four teens were found guilty of killing 37-year-old Vickie Deblieux in Jefferson County in 1994. Grayson was one of them.
In January, Alabama put Kenneth Smith to death with nitrogen gas. It was the first execution in the country. Alan Eugene Miller will be put to death by nitrogen gas for a second time on September 26. Miller and the state recently made a settlement in their lawsuit over the way Miller was put to death.
Alabama wants to carry out the second nitrogen execution even though people are still arguing about what happened at the first one.
Nitrogen hypoxia is when someone breathes in pure nitrogen gas or amounts of nitrogen gas that are high enough to kill them. They then pass out from lack of oxygen. Due to its “distressing” effects and possible risks to people nearby, veterinarians have refused to use nitrogen asphyxiation to put animals to sleep.
Smith kept shaking on the gurney in the death room for a while as he was put to death on January 25. Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall called the execution “textbook,” but lawyers for the prisoners said it was the exact opposite of what the state said would happen because nitrogen is supposed to kill quickly and humanely.
Grayson is still suing the state to stop them from using the same method that was used to kill Smith. His lawyers said that the method causes too much pain and that Smith was showing signs of “conscious suffocation.”
Marshall said, “As of last night, nitrogen hypoxia as a method of execution is no longer an untested method.” It has been shown to work.”
At the time, Marshall said that 43 other Alabama death row prisoners had asked to be put to death by nitrogen hypoxia.
Last week, Matt Schulz, an assistant federal defender who is defending Grayson, said that they were upset that the execution was allowed before the federal courts “had a chance to review Mr. Grayson’s challenge to the constitutionality of Alabama’s current nitrogen protocol.”
Miller and the state came to a “confidential settlement agreement” earlier this month, which meant that Miller would no longer be suing over the state’s nitrogen gas protocol. A representative for the Alabama Department of Corrections wouldn’t say if the state is changing how things work for Miller.
On February 21, 1994, Grayson was charged with beating and killing Deblieux. Deblieux was traveling from Tennessee to Louisiana to visit her mother when four teens, including Grayson, offered to take her. Prosecutors said they took her into the woods, beat her up, and then threw her off a cliff. Prosecutors say that the teens later cut up her body.
Grayson, Kenny Loggins, and Trace Duncan were all found guilty and given the death penalty. But Loggins and Duncan’s death sentences were thrown out because they were under 18 at the time of the crime. In 2005, the U.S. Supreme Court said that people who were under 18 at the time of the crime could not be put to death. Grayson was 19 years old.
The fourth teen was given a life sentence in jail.