Alabama sets nitrogen gas execution a week before Thanksgiving

Alabama has set its fourth execution this year, and it will be the Thursday before Thanksgiving.

Gov. Kay Ivey has set the execution for Carey Dale Grayson for the 30-hour period of between midnight Nov. 21 to 6 a.m. Nov. 22. Thanksgiving is Nov. 28.

If all set executions go forward, Alabama will have executed five people in 2024. Kenneth Eugene Smith was executed Jan. 25, but that execution was set in 2023.

“Although I have no current plans to grant clemency in this case, I retain my authority under the Constitution of the state of Alabama to grant a reprieve or commutation if necessary, at any time before the execution is carried out,” Ivey wrote in a letter to Department of Corrections Commission John Hamm in setting the execution date.

Nitrogen hypoxia will be the method, making his execution the third time this year the state has approved using the controversial method. If the execution goes forward, it will be in the death chamber at William C. Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore.

The crime

Grayson, now 49, was convicted of capital murder along with three other teens in the torture, bludgeoning death and mutilation of Vickie Deblieux on Feb. 21, 1994. The 37-year-old Deblieux was hitchhiking from Chattanooga to visit her mother in Louisiana when the teens picked her up along Interstate 59 near Trussville in Jefferson County, court records show.

More: Nitrogen gas execution: Kenneth Smith convulses for four minutes in Alabama death chamber

Court records and media coverage paint a grim picture of Deblieux’s last hours on earth. Grayson was convicted on capital murder along with Kenny Loggins, Trace Duncan and Louis Mangione.

After picking her up on the interstate, the group went to a wooded area on Bald Mountain using the ruse that the teens were going to get another vehicle. Deblieux was beaten, stomped and kicked to death. Testimony showed that one teen stood on her throat in an effort to kill her.

Her body was thrown off a cliff. The teens returned later and mutilated her corpse, cutting the body at least 180 times, removing a portion of one of her lungs and cutting off her fingers. The teens became suspects in the murder when Mangione showed one of Deblieux’s fingers to a friend.

Duncan, Loggins and Mangione had their death sentences reversed and were each given life in prison without the possibility of parole after the United States Supreme Court in 2005 banned the execution of offenders who are younger than 18 when they commit crimes. Grayson was 19 at the time of the murder.

The execution method

Nitrogen hypoxia is a controversial method of execution, having only been tried once before in the country, when Alabama executed Kenneth Eugene Smith in January. Smith’s execution by the method drew national and international scorn and media attention, including a protest from the Vatican.

In Alabama, there are about 160 inmates on death row, and they are given the option of what method of execution will be used. The three execution methods in Alabama are lethal injection, nitrogen hypoxia and electrocution. Grayson is among about 30 inmates who chose the nitrogen hypoxia method before its first use in Alabama.

More: Alabama executions through the years: Facts, figures and failures

With the nitrogen hypoxia method, the condemned breathes pure nitrogen through a mask that displaces oxygen in their system. Proponents claim it is an almost instant and painless method. Opponents claim it is untried and amounts to torture.

Smith appeared to writhe and convulse on the gurney for at least four minutes during the execution . State and prison systems officials had said before the execution that Smith should lose consciousness “within seconds,” and be dead within minutes once the gas started flowing into the full-face mask Smith wore.

Alabama Department of Corrections Commissioner John Q. Hamm called Smith’s execution “textbook,” in a news conference about half an hour after the execution, and said the prisons system was ready to move forward with other nitrogen hypoxia executions.

If Grayson’s execution goes forward, he would likely be the third inmate to be executed by nitrogen hypoxia in the state. On Sept. 26, Alan Eugene Miller is set to be executed with nitrogen hypoxia as the method.

Contact Montgomery Advertiser reporter Marty Roney at mroney@gannett.com.

This article originally appeared on Montgomery Advertiser: Alabama sets nitrogen gas execution a week before Thanksgiving