An Alabama man convicted of killing a hitchhiker in 1994 cursed at the prison warden and made obscene gestures shortly before being executed with nitrogen gas on Thursday evening, as the victim’s daughter spoke out against the death penalty.
Carey Dale Grayson, who was 50 years old, was put to death at the William Holman prison in southern Alabama.
He was one of four teens found guilty of killing 37-year-old Vickie DeBlieux while she hitched a ride across the state to her mother’s house in Louisiana. Someone attacked, beat, and threw the woman off a cliff.
Just after 6 p.m. ET, the curtains to the execution room were opened. The case for the death penalty was over, and the controversial new US method of suffocating people to death with nitrogen was used to end it.
When the warden asked Grayson if he had any last words, he said something bad while strapped to a gurney and wearing a gas mask over his face.
The microphone was turned off by prison staff, so no one in the witness room could hear what was said after that. Grayson raised both middle fingers.
It was not clear when the gas started to flow. Grayson moved his head back and forth, shook, and pulled on the gurney straps. He clenched his fist and looked like he was having a hard time trying to make a gesture again.
The Associated Press reported that at 6:14 p.m., his legs wrapped in sheets rose off the gurney and into the air. He gasped for air more than a dozen times over the course of a few minutes. At 6:30 p.m., it looked like he stopped breathing.
At 6:27 p.m., the curtains to the viewing room were shut, and at 6:33 p.m., Grayson was pronounced dead.
Alabama had used nitrogen gas to kill someone three times before this one. One person is deprived of oxygen while nitrogen is pumped through a mask.
Alabama is the only state that uses this method. It can not be used on most mammals in the US and Europe because it was banned by vets.
Reprieve US deputy director Matt Wells said, “The only lesson to be learned from this terrible chain of events is that when states use people as guinea pigs for lethal experiments, they are going to suffer, whether they are being stabbed or hidden behind a mask.”
The first two nitrogen executions that the southern state carried out were not without controversy. Alabama said that Kenneth Smith’s first nitrogen killing in January was “possibly the most humane way of execution ever thought of.”
Those claims were not supported by reports from people who saw Smith writhing and shaking on the gurney for several minutes while his eyes rolled back.
John Hamm, the commissioner of prisons in Alabama, said the nitrogen flowed for 15 minutes. About 10 minutes after the gas started flowing, an electrocardiogram showed that Grayson’s heart stopped beating.
Some of Grayson’s first movements, like shaking and gasping on the gurney, were just “all show,” according to Hamm.
But he insisted that Grayson’s other movements and the movements caused by nitrogen gas were normal, uncontrollable movements, like the breathing at the end.
In 1994, Grayson was one of four teens who picked up Deblieux while she was hitchhiking and then beat and killed her.
Of the four, only Grayson, who was 19 at the time, was put to death. The death sentences of the other three co-defendants, who were all 18, were thrown out by the US Supreme Court because of a law that says kids can not be put to death.
On Thursday night, the victim’s daughter told reporters that her mother’s future was taken away from her. But she also spoke out against the choice to put Grayson to death.
“Murdering prisoners in the name of justice needs to stop,” she said. “No one should be able to take away someone is chances, days, and life,” Jodi Haley, who was 12 years old when her mother was killed, told reporters.
People were put to death hours after Grayson asked the US Supreme Court to stop the execution.
His lawyers said that the method of execution causes “conscious suffocation” and that the first two nitrogen executions did not quickly knock the prisoners out and kill them as the state had promised.