The controversial execution method using nitrogen has been used for the third time in the American state of Alabama. Inmate Carey Dale Grayson killed a hitchhiker in 1994; The death penalty was imposed on him on Thursday evening.
Nitrogen was used for the first time in an execution in Alabama earlier this year. In this method, a breathing gas mask is placed on the convict’s face, which replaces the breathing air with pure nitrogen gas, resulting in death due to lack of oxygen.
Lawyers unsuccessfully asked for a postponement
Grayson’s lawyers had called for a stay of the execution, arguing that the execution method needed further investigation before it was used. Defense attorneys said the first two nitrogen executions did not result in rapid unconsciousness and death, as the state had promised. After the Supreme Court rejected the stay, Grayson was finally executed a few hours later.
Prisoners trembled for minutes during the first nitrogen executions
Despite much opposition, Alabama is convinced that the execution method is constitutional. Critics complained that the first two people executed shook for several minutes before dying. “The normalization of gas asphyxiation as a method of execution is deeply disturbing,” said Abraham Bonowitz, executive director of Death Penalty Action, an NGO that advocates for the abolition of the death penalty.
Youth gang brutally murders hitchhiker
In 1994, Grayson killed Vickie Deblieux, who was hitchhiking through Alabama on her way to her mother’s home in Louisiana. He was one of four teenagers convicted of the 37-year-old’s murder. They offered the woman a lift and then took her to a forest where she was beaten to death. They then threw her body off a cliff – later returning to mutilate the body.
The perpetrator bragged about cutting off the victim’s finger
Her face was so disfigured that the victim could only be identified based on a previous X-ray of her spine. The perpetrators were arrested because one of them showed Deblieux’s severed finger and bragged about it. Grayson is the only one of the quartet to receive the death penalty for the crime: he was 19 at the time of the crime, the others were under 18.
Source: Krone
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