Atmore, Alabama – A man convicted of the 1994 killing of a female hitchhiker in Alabama was executed Thursday evening using nitrogen gas, marking the third such execution in the nation. Carey Dale Grayson, 50, was pronounced dead at 6:33 p.m. at William C. Holman Correctional Facility in southern Alabama after the implementation of this new method of the death penalty. Grayson was part of a group of four teens convicted of the murder of Vickie Deblieux, 37, as she hitchhiked through Alabama on her way to her mother’s home in Louisiana.

The state of Alabama introduced the use of nitrogen gas earlier in the year for executions, which involves placing a respirator gas mask over the individual’s face to replace breathable air with pure nitrogen gas, resulting in death due to oxygen deprivation. Grayson’s execution proceeded after the US Supreme Court denied his request for a stay, despite his legal team’s argument that the execution method needed further examination before being utilized again.

Deblieux’s mutilated body was discovered at the base of a bluff near Odenville, Alabama in 1994. She had been hitchhiking from Chattanooga, Tennessee to her mother’s residence in West Monroe, Louisiana when Grayson and the other teens offered her a ride. Following the ride, the teens took her to a wooded area where they brutally attacked and killed her, subsequently returning to further desecrate her remains.

Grayson was the sole individual among the group of teenagers to face the death penalty, as the others were under the age of 18 at the time of the crime. Amid Grayson’s final appeals, the focus was on the scrutiny of the new execution method, with arguments raised about the experience of “conscious suffocation” and discrepancies in the promised swift unconsciousness and death. Despite the criticism surrounding the execution method, Alabama maintains the constitutional validity of using nitrogen gas for executions.

Critics of the method, however, point to previous executions where individuals reportedly experienced shaking for several minutes, raising concerns about the need for further scrutiny before other states adopt Alabama’s approach. Abraham Bonowitz, executive director of Death Penalty Action, expressed deep concerns regarding the normalization of gas suffocation as an execution method.