Demetrius Terrence Frazier, 52, is scheduled to be executed in February after being convicted of the November 1991 rape and murder of Pauline Brown, 40, in Birmingham. (Alabama Department of Corrections)
Attorneys for an Alabama death row inmate scheduled to be executed next month have filed a lawsuit in federal court seeking to postpone the execution.
In the lawsuit, the federal defenders for the U.S. Middle District of Alabama, representing Demetrius Terrence Frazier, sentenced to death for the 1991 rape and murder of Pauline Brown argue that the execution should be put on hold to allow the courts to consider a lawsuit from Frazier filed in November challenging the state’s use of nitrogen gas in executions.
The state argues that the federal courts have already dismissed similar claims raised by other people subjected to the execution method.
Frazier’s attorneys included details of the three prior executions that the Alabama Department of Corrections conducted using the nitrogen gas protocol as supporting evidence.
“The data set for nitrogen hypoxia executions is small — three — but provides clear results: Alabama’s method does not work the way Defendants claim and necessarily causes conscious suffocation, in violation of the Eighth Amendment,” the motion for preliminary injunction states.
The state used nitrogen gas to execute Kenneth Eugene Smith in January 2024; to execute Alan Eugene Miller in September, and to execute Carey Dale Grayson in November.The lawsuit argues the state’s nitrogen gas protocol Frazier’s Eighth Amendment protections against cruel and unusual punishment and argues that the three men executed by nitrogen gas were not unconscious when the executions were carried out.
The method, the lawsuit alleges, “ creates an unnecessary risk of superadded pain and survivable hypoxia induced injury.”.
In a response filed on Tuesday, the Alabama attorney general’s office argued that the courts had already rejected similar arguments in other nitrogen gas cases, including Grayson’s, and that Frazier had not identified a plausible alternative method of execution, as required by the courts.
“Everyone agreed Grayson would consciously inhale ‘pure nitrogen gas’ rather than oxygen, but the Eleventh Circuit nonetheless held that the protocol posed no risk of ‘conscious suffocation’ that ‘can create an Eighth Amendment problem,” the filing said. “Accordingly, Frazier needed to plead more than oxygen deprivation.”
The state also argued that two alternative execution methods proposed by Frazier – sedation prior to nitrogen gas execution, or a dose of ketamine to render him unconscious followed by a lethal injection of fentanyl – are “untried and untested.”
Should the courts deny Frazier’s motion, he would be the fourth person to be executed in Alabama by nitrogen gas, and the first individual on death row to be executed in 2025 after the state led the country in executions the prior year.
Gov. Kay Ivey has set Frazier’s execution for Feb. 6.
According to court documents, Frazier, now 52, broke into Brown’s apartment in November 1991 and robbed the residence, then threatened Brown with a gun and sexually assaulted her before killing her. Frazier was arrested in March 1992 in Detroit, Michigan.
A jury convicted Brown in 1996 of capital murder and sentenced him to death. Frazier was also convicted in Michigan of the murder of 14-year-old Crystal Kendrick in 1992, and sentenced to life imprisonment in that state, as well as for other charges of rape and robbery. He served time in Michigan until 2011, when he was transferred to Holman Correctional Facility in Escambia County.
Frazier’s attorneys cited prior nitrogen gas executions in that filing as support for his claims. Media witnesses reported that all three men could be seen visibly struggling and gasping for breath during the executions.
“Depriving a conscious person of oxygen creates a ‘constitutionally unacceptable risk of suffocation,’” the November lawsuit states. “Because the Protocol does not have sufficient safeguards to prevent conscious suffocation, it violates the Eighth Amendment.”
Alabama Reflector Editor Brian Lyman contributed to this report.