A death row inmate in Alabama was executed Thursday afternoon by nitrogen gas, but not before a Tex-Mex-style final meal and profane words directed at the execution staff.
Carey Dale Grayson has been on death row for 28 years following the 1994 murder and mutilation of 37-year-old hitchhiker Vickie Lynn Deblieux, who was traveling from Chatanooga, TN. to his mother’s house in West Monroe, LA.
Grayson’s execution began shortly after 6 p.m. at the William C. Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore, AL, when the curtains of the execution chamber were opened.
The 50-year-old was brought in and tied to a table before the death warrant was read out by a prison warden.
The microphone was brought to Grayson for his last words before he spoke.
“For you, you should f–k off,” Grayson said while pointing his left middle finger, AL.com reported.
The microphone was immediately taken away, which Commissioner John Hamm attributed to Grayson’s behavior toward jail staff throughout the day.
“He cussed out most of our employees tonight so we weren’t going to give him the opportunity to spew that profanity,” Hamm said, according to the outlet.
Grayson’s attorney and spiritual adviser said his client should have said more, including admitting he committed a heinous crime and that he feels remorse.
Grayson also went after the prison system and said the state was committing murder and was a “serial killer,” Kacey Keeton told reporters after his death.
Nitrogen gas began to enter Grayson’s respirator at 6:12 p.m. and flowed for 15 minutes.
When the gas is administered, Grayson shakes occasionally before catching his breath.
He was pronounced dead at 6:33 pm
The execution is the 22nd in the US this year and the 6th in Alabama.
Grayson’s death is the third time an inmate has been executed by nitrogen gas, a controversial method in which gas replaces breathing air resulting in death from lack of oxygen.
For the last day, Grayson refused to eat breakfast and lunch, opting for coffee and Mountain Dew.
The last meal was soft tacos, beef burritos, tostadas, chips and guacamole, and a Mountain Dew Blast from a local restaurant.
Grayson was part of a group of four teenagers who offered Deblieux a ride but kidnapped his two mothers and took them to a wooded area where they were attacked and killed on February 22, 1994.
Grayson, 19, Kenny Loggins, 17, and Trace Duncan, along with 16-year-old Louis Mangione, took the victim to an area near Medical Center East in Birmingham, where the five had been drinking before the teenager began attacking them. , according to AL.com.
The teenager left the scene, leaving Deblieux’s body where Mangione was dropped off at the house while the other three returned to the scene.
Deblieux’s body was stabbed more than 180 times as the teenagers cut open his chest cavity, cut off all his fingers and smashed his face and head, while removing all but one tooth.
The teenager stripped Deblieux’s body before throwing it off a cliff at Bald Rock in St. Clair County.
During the teenager’s 1996 trial, the medical examiner testified that his face was so cracked that an X-ray before his spine identified him.
Mangione was given one of Deblieux’s fingers, before he immediately showed it to one of his friends, who then called the police, according to the outlet.
Mangione was given a life sentence while Loggins and Duncan’s death sentences were commuted to life in prison in 2006, leaving Grayson the only one of the group to be executed, WKRG reported.
Deblieux’s daughter, Jodi Haley was at the execution and remembered her mother.
“She’s unique. She’s spontaneous, she’s wild. She’s funny and beautiful to boot,” said Haley, who was 12 when her mother died.
Haley said Grayson was abused throughout his life, including smoking cigarettes on his skin and sexually assaulting him.
“I have to wonder how all this slipped through the cracks of the justice system. Because society failed this man when he was a child and my family suffered,” he said.
Haley blasted the execution saying the “eye-for-an-eye” method was “not right.”
“Killing prisoners under the guise of justice must stop,” he said, adding that “no one has the right to take their chances, days, and lives.”
With Post cable
