In Alabama, a man is executed for the third time for killing a hitchhiker with nitrogen gas

A man convicted of killing a hitchhiker in Alabama in 1994 was executed using nitrogen gas Thursday night in the third nationwide execution.

Carey Dale Grayson, 50, was pronounced dead at 6:33 p.m. at the William C. Holman Correctional Facility in southern Alabama after the new death penalty method was used. He was one of four teenagers convicted of murdering 37-year-old Vickie Deblieux as she hitchhiked through Alabama on the way to her mother’s home in Louisiana.

Alabama began using nitrogen gas to carry out some executions earlier this year. In this method, a respirator gas mask is placed over the person’s face to replace the breathing air with pure nitrogen gas, resulting in death from oxygen deficiency.

The execution came hours after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected Grayson’s request for a stay. His lawyers had argued that the method needed more scrutiny before it could be used again.

Deblieux’s mutilated body was found at the base of a cliff near Odenville, Alabama, on February 26, 1994. She was hitchhiking from Chattanooga, Tennessee, to her mother’s home in West Monroe, Louisiana, when the four teenagers offered her a ride. Prosecutors said the teens took her to a wooded area and attacked and beat her. They threw her off a cliff and later returned to mutilate her body.

A medical examiner testified that Deblieux’s face was so broken that she could be identified from an earlier X-ray of her spine. Investigators said the teens were identified as suspects after one of them showed one of Deblieux’s severed fingers to a friend and bragged about the murder.

Grayson was the only one of the four teenagers to face the death penalty, as the other teenagers were under 18 at the time of the murder. Grayson was 19 years old. Two of the teens were initially sentenced to death, but those sentences were overturned when the Supreme Court banned the execution of offenders who were under 18 at the time of their crimes. Another teenager involved in Deblieux’s murder was sentenced to life in prison.

Grayson’s most recent appeals had focused on calling for closer scrutiny of the new execution method. His lawyers argued that the person was “consciously asphyxiated” and that the first two nitrogen executions did not result in rapid unconsciousness and death, as the state had promised. Lawyers for the Alabama attorney general’s office urged the justices to proceed with the execution, saying a lower court had found Grayson’s claims speculative.

Alabama believes the method is constitutional. But critics say the method needs more scrutiny, especially if other states follow Alabama’s path.

“The normalization of gas asphyxiation as a method of execution is deeply troubling,” said Abraham Bonowitz, executive director of Death Penalty Action, a group that advocates for the abolition of the death penalty.

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