Alabama will use nitrogen gas to execute man responsible for killing hitchhiker in 1994

An Alabama inmate convicted of the 1994 murder of a hitchhiker is set to become the third person on Thursday…

An Alabama inmate convicted of murdering a hitchhiker in 1994 is scheduled to be sentenced Thursday third person executed using nitrogen gas.

Carey Dale Grayson, 50, was one of four teenagers convicted of killing 37-year-old Vickie Deblieux, who was hitchhiking through Alabama on her way to her mother’s home in Louisiana. The execution is scheduled to take place on Thursday evening at the Prison. William C. Holman in south Alabama.

Alabama this year started using nitrogen to carry out some death sentences, this is the first use of the new execution method in the United States since the introduction of lethal injection in 1982. The method involves placing a gas mask over a person’s face to replace breathing air with pure nitrogen, causing death by lack of oxygen .

Alabama maintains that the method is constitutional. But critics — citing the way the first two people were executed shook for several minutes — say the method requires more scrutiny, especially if other states follow Alabama’s lead and adopt the new execution method.

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

The medical examiner testified that Deblieux’s face was so broken that it was identified on an earlier spine X-ray. Her fingers were also cut off. Investigators said four teenagers were considered suspects after one of them showed a friend a severed finger and bragged about the killing.

Grayson is the only one of the four to face the death sentence because the other teenagers were under 18 at the time of the murder. Grayson was 19 years old. Two teenagers were initially sentenced to death, but their sentences were overturned when the U.S. Supreme Court banned the execution of criminals who were under 18 at the time of the crime. Another teenager involved in Deblieux’s murder was sentenced to life in prison.

Grayson’s recent appeals have focused on calling for greater scrutiny of the new execution method. They argued that the person was experiencing “conscious asphyxiation” and that the first two nitrogen executions did not result in rapid loss of consciousness and death as the state had promised. Grayson’s attorneys asked the U.S. Supreme Court to stay the execution to allow time to consider the constitutionality of the method.

“Given that this is the first new method of execution used in the United States since the first use of lethal injection in 1982, it is appropriate for the Court to address issues related to this new method,” Grayson’s lawyers wrote. On Thursday morning, his lawyers filed a separate emergency motion with a federal judge, asking that he be allowed to take a sedative before his execution to ease his fear. Grayson asked his prison doctor for a sedative on Wednesday but was told it was “too late,” his lawyers wrote.

Lawyers for the Alabama attorney general’s office asked the judges to allow the verdict to be enforced, saying the lower court found Grayson’s claims speculative.

State attorneys wrote that Alabama’s “nitrogen hypoxia protocol has been successfully used twice and resulted in death within minutes both times.”