MONTGOMERY, Alabama — Alabama’s governor has set November 21 as the execution date for what will be the third death penalty in the United States to be carried out with nitrogen gas.
Governor Kay Ivey has set the execution date for Carey Dale Grayson after the Alabama Supreme Court ruled last week decided that it could take place. Grayson was one of four teenagers convicted of the 1994 murder of 37-year-old Vickie Deblieux in Jefferson County.
Alabama Executed Kenneth Smit in January in the first execution with nitrogen gas in the country. A second execution with nitrogen gas is scheduled for September 26 for Alan Eugene MillerMiller recently reached a settlement with the state in a lawsuit over the execution method.
Alabama wants to carry out the additional nitrogen execution, but there is still disagreement about what happened in the first execution.
Smith shook for a few minutes on an execution chamber gurney as he was put to death on Jan. 25. While Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall described the execution as “a textbook example,” advocates for prisoners said it was the antithesis of the state’s prediction that nitrogen would ensure a quick and humane death.
Grayson has a pending lawsuit seeking to block the state from using the same protocol used to execute Smith. His attorneys have argued that the method causes unconstitutional levels of pain and that Smith showed signs of “conscious asphyxiation.”
Matt Schulz, an assistant federal defender representing Grayson, said last week that they are disappointed the execution was approved before the federal courts have had a chance to consider Grayson’s challenge to the constitutionality of Alabama’s current nitrogen protocol.
Earlier this month, Miller reached a “confidential settlement agreement” with the state to end his lawsuit about 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.
Grayson was charged on February 21, 1994, with torturing and murdering Deblieux. 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 teenagers later 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 in 2005 banned the execution of offenders who were under 18 at the time of the crime. Grayson was 19.
