MONTGOMERY, Alabama (AP) — A third person will be executed by nitrogen gas, the state of Alabama approved Wednesday, months after becoming the first state to execute a person using the previously untested method.

The Alabama Supreme Court has granted the Attorney General’s request and authorized the execution of Carey Dale Grayson. Grayson was one of four teenagers convicted of the 1994 murder of Vickie Deblieux in Jefferson County. Alabama Governor Kay Ivey will set Grayson’s execution date.

In January, Kenneth Smith was executed by the U.S. government in the first execution by nitrogen gas. A second execution using this protocol is scheduled for September 26. Alan Eugene Miller is scheduled to be executed on September 26. Miller recently reached a settlement with the U.S. government in a legal dispute over the method of execution.

Alabama and the inmates’ attorneys continue to hold opposing views about what happened in the first execution using nitrogen gas. Smith shook for several minutes on the gurney in the death chamber when he was executed on Jan. 25. While Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall called the execution “textbook,” the inmates’ attorneys said it was the opposite of the state’s prediction that nitrogen would ensure a quick and humane death.

Grayson has filed an ongoing lawsuit seeking to prevent the state from using the same protocol used in Smith’s execution. His lawyers argued the method caused unconstitutional pain and that Smith showed signs of “conscious asphyxiation.”

“We are disappointed that the Alabama Supreme Court approved the setting of an execution date before the federal courts had a chance to consider Mr. Grayson’s challenge to the constitutionality of Alabama’s current nitrogen protocol and before Mr. Grayson had a chance to consider any changes to the protocol brought about by the recent settlement with Alan Miller,” Matt Schulz, an assistant federal public defender representing Grayson, wrote in an email.

Earlier this month, Miller entered into a “confidential agreement” with the state to resolve his legal dispute over the details of the state’s nitrogen gas protocol. A spokesman for the Alabama Department of Corrections declined to comment on whether the state is making any procedural changes for Miller.

The state has asked a judge to dismiss Grayson’s lawsuit on the grounds that the method of execution was constitutional and his claims were speculative.

Marshall’s office did not immediately comment on the court’s decision on the execution date.

Grayson was accused of torturing and killing Deblieux, 37, 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. Prosecutors said they took her to a wooded area, attacked her, beat her and threw her off a cliff. The teens later mutilated her body, prosecutors said.

Grayson, Kenny Loggins and Trace Duncan were all convicted and sentenced to death. However, the death sentences against Loggins and Duncan, who were younger than 18 at the time of the crime, were overturned after the U.S. Supreme Court in 2005 banned the execution of offenders who were younger than 18 at the time of the crime. Grayson was 19.

The fourth teenager was sentenced to life imprisonment.

Schulz pointed out that in a 2004 Supreme Court brief opposing an age limit for the death penalty, Alabama wrote that it would be foolish to allow Grayson to be executed but not his co-defendants, who the state says are “clearly equally guilty – if not more guilty – of Vickie’s death and mutilation.” The state wanted to allow all juveniles to be executed.

Lethal injection remains the predominant method of execution in Alabama, but inmates have the choice between the electric chair and nitrogen gas. Grayson had previously chosen nitrogen gas as his preferred method of execution, but that was before the state had developed a procedure for its use.

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