Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey has set the date for the execution of Carey Grayson, convicted of the murder and mutilation of a hitchhiker in 1994, using the controversial method of suffocation with nitrogen gas.
Ivey announced Monday that the execution will take place during a window beginning at midnight on Nov. 21 that will close at 6 a.m. the following day, a Friday. The execution will be carried out by nitrogen hypoxia.
Grayson was one of four teenagers convicted of picking up Vickie Deblieux on the side of an Alabama highway, transporting her to a remote wooded area and then beating her to death.
Her body was later mutilated by the teens, who returned to where they had dumped Deblieux’s corpse, cut off her fingers and removed one of her lungs, according to documents from the Court of Criminal Appeals of Alabama.
Grayson was convicted of the murder in November 1999 and sentenced to death. His will be Alabama’s fourth execution this year and the third using the state’s new method of suffocating inmates sentenced to death with nitrogen gas.
If Grayson’s and another Alabama inmate’s execution are carried out, Republican Gov. Ivey will have presided over more executions in a single year than anyone since 2011.
On Jan. 25, Alabama inaugurated its new method of execution when it put Kenneth Eugene Smith to death for a murder in 1988. His was the first execution carried out by forcing the condemned to breathe pure nitrogen gas through a mask.
Witnesses to Smith’s execution say it took him more than 20 minutes to die. Even before he was put to death, Smith’s imminent execution by nitrogen gas elicited concerns from the United Nations, that it was “an untested method of execution which may subject him to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or even torture.”
Alabama petitioned the state Supreme Court to order Grayon’s execution in June. That order was approved by the court on Aug. 12.
Ivey set a 30-hour timeframe for the execution in an Aug. 19 letter to John Hamm, Commissioner of the Alabama Department of Corrections.
“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.
