MONTGOMERY, Alabama: The Alabama Supreme Court this week approved the execution of a third person by nitrogen gas, months after the state became the first to execute a human being using the previously untested method.
The 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 US government in the first execution by nitrogen gas. A second execution using this protocol is scheduled for September 26. On September 26, Alan Eugene Miller will be executed. Miller recently reached an agreement with the US government on 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 a lawsuit to prevent the state from using the same procedure used in Smith’s execution. His lawyers argued the method caused unconstitutional pain and that Smith showed signs of “conscious asphyxiation.”
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 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.
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.
