Third execution by nitric oxide in Alabama planned for November

The governor of Alabama has set November 21 as the execution date for the third death sentence in the country, which was Nitrogen gas.

Gov. Kay Ivey set the execution date for Carey Dale Grayson, 49, after the Alabama Supreme Court ruled last week that the execution could go ahead. Grayson was one of four teenagers convicted of the 1994 murder of 37-year-old Vickie Deblieux in Jefferson County.

Alabama executed Kenneth Smith in January in the country's first nitrogen gas execution. A second nitrogen gas execution is scheduled for September 26. Alan Eugene MillerMiller recently reached a settlement with the state in a legal dispute over the method of execution.

Alabama wants to conduct another nitrogen execution amid ongoing disagreement about what happened during the first one.

Nitrogen hypoxia is a procedure that involves inhaling either pure nitrogen gas or nitrogen gas at a concentration high enough to be fatal until the person suffocates. Veterinarians have refused to use nitrogen asphyxia to euthanize animals because of its “excruciating” effects and potential risks to people around them.

Smith trembled for several minutes on the gurney in the death chamber as he was executed on January 25. While Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall called the execution “textbook,” lawyers for the inmates said it was the opposite of the state's prediction that nitrogen would ensure a quick and humane death.

Grayson has filed an ongoing lawsuit to prevent the state from using the same protocol used in Smith's execution. His lawyers argued the method caused unconstitutional pain and that Smith showed signs of “conscious asphyxiation.”

After Smith's execution, Marshall said, “As of last night, nitrogen hypoxia as a method of execution is no longer an untested method. It is a proven method.”

Marshall said at the time that 43 other death row inmates in Alabama had requested execution by nitrogen hypoxia.

Matt Schulz, an assistant federal public defender representing Grayson, said last week they were disappointed that the execution was approved before the federal courts “had an opportunity to consider Mr. Grayson's challenge to the constitutionality of Alabama's current nitrogen protocol.”

Earlier this month, Miller entered into a “confidential agreement” with the state to resolve his legal dispute over the details of the state's nitrogen gas protocol. A spokesman for the Alabama Department of Corrections declined to comment on whether the state is making procedural changes for Miller.

Grayson was charged with torturing and killing Deblieux on Feb. 21, 1994. Prosecutors said Deblieux was hitchhiking from Tennessee to her mother's home in Louisiana when four teenagers, including Grayson, offered her a ride. Prosecutors said they took her to a wooded area, attacked her, beat her and threw her off a cliff. The teens later mutilated her body, prosecutors said.

Grayson, Kenny Loggins and Trace Duncan were all convicted and sentenced to death. However, the death sentences against Loggins and Duncan, who were younger than 18 at the time of the crime, were overturned after the U.S. Supreme Court in 2005 banned the execution of offenders who were younger than 18 at the time of the crime. Grayson was 19.

The fourth teenager was sentenced to life imprisonment.