Alabama schedules fifth execution for 2024

A jury convicted Carey Dale Grayson of the 1994 murder of Vickie Deblieux. (Alabama Department of Corrections)

Gov. Kay Ivey Monday set a November execution date for Carey Dale Grayson, the fifth in the year.

Grayson’s scheduled execution, which will take place between midnight on Nov. 21 and 6 a.m. on Nov. 22, will use nitrogen gas, the third scheduled to take place this year.

Grayson was convicted of two counts of capital murder in the 1994 murder of Vickie Deblieux. According to court documents, Grayson was part of a group of teenagers who picked up Deblieux while she was hitchhiking and transported her to a wooded area, where Debileux was killed. A jury convicted Grayson of capital murder in March 1996 and recommended that he be sentenced to death.

His conviction and sentence were upheld throughout the state appeals process, which was completed in 2006. Grayson then took his case to federal court and filed a writ of habeas petition in the Northern District of Alabama and was denied in September 2009.

Grayson’s appeal to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals was denied in October 2010 and his final appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court was denied a year later.

In June, Federal Defenders for the Middle District of Alabama filed a complaint on Grayson’s behalf challenging the state’s nitrogen gas execution protocol and proposing his own execution protocol with nitrogen gas.

In his complaint, Grayson argued that  the state’s nitrogen gas execution protocol violated his Eighth Amendment right against cruel and unusual punishment. Gray proposed two alternatives. In the first, the state injects him with 10 mg of ketamine and places him in a hyperbaric chamber filled with 90% nitrogen. Once the execution begins, the chamber would be filled with 100% nitrogen that Grayson would breathe until he passes away.

The second protocol bypasses the nitrogen gas protocol completely, and instead, Grayson would be executed by lethal injection using ketamine and fentanyl.

Grayson would be the fifth person the state plans to execute for the year. The state executed Kenneth Eugene Smith by nitrogen gas in January. Jamie Ray Mills, executed in May , and Keith Edmund Gavin, executed in July , were both put to death by lethal injection. Alan Eugene Miller is scheduled to be executed by nitrogen gas in September.