WASHINGTON: An Alabama man convicted of the murder of a hitchhiker was executed with nitrogen gas on Thursday, officials said, the third use of the controversial execution method in the southern US state this year.
The execution of Carey Grayson, 49, took place at the William Holman Correctional Center in the town of Atmore, where he was pronounced dead at 6:33 p.m. local time, the state prison authority said in a statement.
“Alabama has successfully used nitrogen hypoxia to carry out the execution of Carey Grayson,” Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall said in a statement. “Tonight justice has been done.”
Grayson was sentenced to death for the 1994 murder of Vickie Deblieux, 37, who was killed while hitchhiking from Tennessee to visit her mother in Louisiana.
Media witnesses said Grayson swore at a prison warden when asked if he had a final statement and made an obscene gesture.
They said Grayson shook his head from side to side as gas began to flow into the mask covering his face. He gasped for several minutes before he stopped moving and was pronounced dead.
Grayson's last meal included soft tacos, beef burritos, guacamole and Mountain Dew Blast, the corrections authority said.
Grayson, who was 19 at the time, and three other teens offered Deblieux a ride, but they took her to a wooded area where they beat her to death and mutilated her body, according to court documents.
They stabbed her 180 times, removed one of her lungs, and cut off her fingers and thumbs.
“More than 30 years ago, Grayson and his accomplices brutally murdered a complete stranger and mutilated her body,” Marshall's statement said. “It takes a truly cruel monster to commit this kind of crime.”
Grayson was sentenced to death, while the other three participants in the murder, who were under 18 years old at the time of the crime, are serving life sentences.
Alabama carried out the first execution in the United States using nitrogen gas in January and a second in September.
Execution is carried out by pumping nitrogen gas into a face mask, causing the prisoner to suffocate.
Grayson chose nitrogen gas as his method of execution instead of lethal injection.
United Nations experts on Wednesday urged Alabama authorities to halt the execution.
“This method may constitute cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, or even torture,” the eight independent UN rights experts said in a joint statement.
“We reiterate our call for an urgent ban on executions by nitrogen asphyxiation, which is clearly prohibited by international law,” said the experts, who were appointed by the U.N. Human Rights Council but do not speak on behalf of the UN.
More broadly, they called on the United States to “join a growing global consensus toward universal abolition of the death penalty, beginning by quickly imposing a moratorium on executions.”
The death penalty has been abolished in 23 of the 50 US states, while six others (Arizona, California, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania and Tennessee) have moratoriums.
This year there have been 21 executions in the United States.
