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. Michigan supports Alabama’s efforts to have Frazier’s lawsuit dismissed. (Alabama Department of Corrections)
Officials in Michigan will not oppose Demetrius Frazier’s execution that Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey scheduled for next Thursday using nitrogen gas.
Attorneys for Demetrius Terrence Frazier, scheduled to be executed on Feb. 6 for the 1991 rape and murder of Pauline Brown, had argued that he should be remanded to the custody of Michigan prison authorities, where he was serving a life sentence for the murder of 14-year-old Crystal Kendrick before being transferred to Alabama in 2011.
But in a court filing last week, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel said the court could not compel Michigan to extradite Frazier.
“While Michigan takes no position on the imposition of the death penalty in this case, Michigan does not seek to return Frazier to a Michigan correctional facility,” the filing stated.
Frazier’s attorneys likened Nessel’s argument to one that former Alabama Attorney General Jeff Sessions made in the 2018 case of Moody vs. Holman in which a person on Alabama’s death row sought to stop his scheduled execution because he was supposed to be in federal custody and not imprisoned within the Alabama Department of Corrections (DOC).
Messages seeking comment were left with Nessel’s office and the office of Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer office on Monday.
By refusing to take custody of Frazier, Frazier’s attorneys wrote, Michigan and Frazier “will make history: he will be the first prisoner executed while in the state of Michigan’s custody.”
Frazier’s attorneys alleged that the 2011 agreement that led to Frazier’s transfer to Alabama, negotiated by Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder and Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley, is unlawful.
“The executive agreement violates the due process clause because it was done with the intent to deprive Mr. Frazier of his Fourteenth Amendment right to life and without lawful authority,” Frazier’s attorneys allege in the lawsuit.
They also state that “Michigan law requires Mr. Frazier to serve his life sentences in ‘a state correctional facility or a county jail.’”
Frazier, 52, is currently incarcerated at Holman Correctional Facility’s death row after a jury convicted him of capital murder for his role in the 1991 rape and murder of Pauline Brown, 40.
Court documents state that Frazier broke into Brown’s apartment seeking to rob the location. He then found Brown who was in the apartment, threatened her with a gun and sexually assaulted her before killing her.
This lawsuit is separate from the one that Frazier filed in federal district court in the U.S. Middle District of Alabama alleging that the nitrogen gas protocol the state plans to use violates his Eighth Amendment protections against cruel and unusual punishment.
Detroit police apprehended Frazier, then 19 in March 1992. A Michigan jury convicted him of the murder of 14-year-old Kendrick in 1993 and sentenced him to life in prison. He was convicted of Brown’s murder in 1996. Alabama at the time requested Michigan to keep Frazier in custody, where he remained until being transferred to Alabama in 2011.
“Frazier’s petition alleges claims that are not cognizable in federal habeas because they concern only state law and otherwise rest on the exclusive powers of states as independent sovereigns,” the Michigan Attorney General’s Office stated in its filing. “The petition is also untimely, and Frazier has not exhausted his claims in the state courts of either Alabama or Michigan before bringing his habeas petition to this Court.”
The court has yet to rule on this case.
Alabama executed six people in 2024, three by nitrogen gas. Michigan abolished the death penalty in 1847, and its state constitution expressly forbids capital punishment.
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