An Alabama death row inmate was executed by nitrogen gas Thursday night, but before that, he was treated to a Tex-Mex-style final meal and a profanity-filled rant directed at execution staff.
Carrie Dale Grayson had been on death row for 28 years since the 1994 murder and dismemberment of Vicki Lynn Debreu, a 37-year-old hitchhiker traveling from Chattanooga, Tennessee. To my mother's house in West Monroe, Louisiana.
Grayson's execution began shortly after 6 p.m. at the William C. Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore, Alabama, when the curtain in the execution chamber was opened.
The 50-year-old man was brought in and tied to a table before the prison warden read out his death warrant.
The microphone was pointed at Grayson to say his last words before he went on a rant.
“You need to stop,” Grayson said, holding up the middle finger of his left hand. AL.com reported.
The microphone was quickly taken away, but Commissioner Jon Hamm blamed Grayson's behavior toward prison staff throughout the day.
“He berated most of our employees tonight, and we weren't going to give him a chance to use that profanity,” Hamm said, according to the newspaper.
Ms Grayson's lawyer and spiritual adviser revealed that she had more to say, including admitting that her client had committed a horrific crime and that she was sorry for it.
Grayson also went after the prison system, saying the state was committing the murders and that they were “serial killers,” he told reporters after Casey Keaton's death.
Nitrogen gas began entering the ventilator Grayson was wearing at 6:12 p.m. and flowed for 15 minutes.
While the gas was being administered, Grayson would tremble at times and then periodically take a series of gasping breaths.
He was pronounced dead at 6:33 p.m.
This is the 22nd execution this year in the United States, and the sixth in Alabama.
Grayson's death was the third time a death row inmate was executed with nitrogen gas, a controversial method that uses the gas instead of breathable air and causes death from lack of oxygen.
Grayson refused to eat breakfast or lunch on his last day, opting for coffee and Mountain Dew.
His last meal was soft tacos, beef burritos, tostadas, chips, guacamole, and a Mountain Dew Blast from a local restaurant.
Grayson was part of a group of four teens who offered Debreu a ride, but they kidnapped the mother of two and took her to a wooded area, where she was murdered on February 22, 1994. attacked and killed.
Grayson, 19 at the time, Kenny Loggins, 17, Trace Duncan, and Luis Mangione, 16, drove the victim to an area near Birmingham Medical Center East, where five people were killed. After everyone had been drinking, the teens began their attack. According to AL.com.
The teens left the witness, leaving Debreu's body where Mangione had been dropped off at his home, and the other three returned to the scene.
Debreu's body was stabbed more than 180 times, and the teenagers slit her chest cavity, severed all her fingers, fractured her face and head, and extracted all but one of her teeth.
The teens stripped Debreu's body and threw it off a cliff on Bald Rock Mountain in St. Clair County.
During the teenager's trial in 1996, a medical examiner testified that her face was so badly fractured that earlier spinal X-rays identified her.
The paper said that after Mangione was given one of Debreu's fingers, he immediately showed it to one of his friends, who then called the police.
Mangione was sentenced to life in prison, but Loggins and Duncan's death sentences were commuted to life in prison in 2006, leaving Grayson the only one of the group to be executed. WKRG reported.
Debreu's daughter, Jodi Haley, attended the execution and remembered her mother.
“She was unique. She was spontaneous, she was wild. She was funny and gorgeous to boot,” said Haley, who was 12 when her mother died.
Haley said Grayson had suffered abuse throughout his life, including having cigarettes pressed against his skin and being sexually abused.
“I wonder how all this slipped through the cracks of the justice system, because society abandoned this man at an early age and my family suffered because of it,” she said. .
Haley criticized the “eye for an eye” approach to executions, calling it “not right.”
“The killing of prisoners under the guise of justice must stop,” she said, adding: “No one should have the right to take away someone's potential, days, and life.”
with post wire
