The authorities of the US state of Alabama carried out this Thursday the third known run of nitrogen gas to a prisoner sentenced to death in the United States, a controversial method that critics say amounts to torture.
The prisoner, Carey Dale Grayson, 50was pronounced dead at 6:33 p.m. (local time) at the William Holman Penitentiary Center in Atmore. This is the sixth execution carried out in Alabama so far this year, the most in more than a decade, according to AL.com.
Grayson, who He dedicated his last words to cursing the director in charge of the prisonwas convicted along with three other men (all of them teenagers at the time) of the murder and mutilation of Vicki Lynn Deblieux, a 37-year-old woman who was hitchhiking to visit her mother in Louisiana. The naked and dismembered body was found four days later on a cliff.
His lawyer, Kacey Keeton, said the convict, who had his microphone taken away after insulting prison officials, wanted to express how sorry he was for it after more than 30 years, and his disappointment with the system.
The victim’s daughter, Jodi Haley, spoke at a press conference about the loss of her mother and her opposition to the death penalty. “The murder of inmates under the pretext of justice must end. State-sanctioned homicide should never be listed as a cause of death,” he declared after recounting that Grayson suffered physical and sexual abuse and questioning “how all of this escapes the judicial system” because “society failed this man when he was child” and his family “suffered for it.
Alabama Governor Key Ivey has stated that “an execution by nitrogen hypoxia cannot compare to the death and dismemberment experienced” by Deblieux. “I pray for their loved ones so that they can continue to find relief and healing,” he said.
Alabama is one of three states in the United States that allows nitrogen hypoxia as an alternative to lethal injection and other traditional methods of capital punishment. Oklahoma and Mississippi are the other states that have authorized this type of capital punishment, although until now none of them had been used.
In January, Alabama executed Kenneth Smith in the same prisonconvicted in 1988 of the contract murder of Elizabeth Sennett on the orders of her husband, Charles Sennett, who committed suicide a week later, when the investigations were focusing on him. In September, executed Alan Eugene Miller, convicted in 2000 of the murder of three men with whom he had worked.