A jury convicted Carey Dale Grayson of the 1994 murder of Vickie Deblieux. Grayson is scheduled to be executed by nitrogen gas Thursday should The U.S. Supreme Court decline to review his appeal. (Alabama Department of Corrections)
Barring intervention by the U.S. Supreme Court, Alabama will carry out its sixth execution of 2024 on Thursday evening.
Carey Dale Grayson, sentenced to death for his role in the murder of Vickie Deblieux in 1994, lost an appeal to the U.S. 11th Circuit Court of Appeals on Monday. The nation’s high court had not issued a decision on the case as of Wednesday evening.
Without further court rulings, the state will carry out his execution within a 30-hour window, beginning Thursday at midnight until 6 a.m. Friday, according to the warrant issued by Gov. Kay Ivey. Executions this year have typically taken place around 6 p.m.
A jury convicted Grayson of two counts of capital murder for his role in the death of Vickie Deblieux and sentenced him to death in 1996. Grayson was part of a cadre of several teenagers who picked Deblieux up while she was hitchhiking along the interstate and transported her to a wooded area, where they beat her to death.
Grayson’ state appeals were denied in 2006 and his federal appeals were exhausted in 2011.
Gov. Kay Ivey scheduled Grayson’s Thursday execution by nitrogen gas in August.
The death row inmate’s recent appeals have focused on the nitrogen gas execution method. Alabama put two men to death through the procedure; witnesses reported both writhing and gasping during the execution, which was touted by supporters in 2018 as a more humane method of execution.
Grayson alleged several problems with the protocol in a lawsuit filed June 28, from the lack of a medical exam prior to his execution to a lack of sedation to problems with the mask that included the lack of an airtight seal and improper monitoring using an EKG and pulse oximeter. He argued the method would subject him to a level of pain that would violate the Eighth Amendment’s protections against cruel and unusual punishment.
Grayson proposed two alternatives to the current protocol: that the state use a sedative prior to executing him using nitrogen gas, or to put him to death with a lethal combination of ketamine and fentanyl.
U.S. District Court Judge R. Austin Huffaker rejected the arguments in a Nov. 8 ruling, stating that the problems that Grayson alleged were speculative, and the pain he would experience is mental.
“Other courts have held that psychological pain or mental suffering cannot by itself support an Eighth Amendment claim,” Huffaker said in the opinion.
A three-judge panel of the 11th Circuit upheld Huffaker’s ruling on Monday, writing that “the district court’s factual findings are not clearly erroneous.”
If Grayson’s execution goes forward, 2024 will have seen Alabama carry out the most executions in a single year since 2011.
The state executed Smith in January, followed by Jamie Ray Mills in May. Keith Edmund Gavin was put to death in July, then Alan Eugene Miller in September, proceeded by Derrick Dearman last month. Mills, Gavin and Dearman were executed by lethal injection; Miller was put to death by nitrogen gas.