As detailed in this lengthy local story, “Alabama executed Carey Dale Grayson for the 1994 brutal slaying and mutilation of a hitchhiker in Jefferson County on Thursday evening, making it the state’s sixth execution in 2024.” Here are some details:
Earlier Thursday, the U.S. Supreme Court cleared the way for 50-year-old Grayson to be killed using the relatively new method of pumping nitrogen gas into a mask fitted over an inmate’s face and suffocating him to death…. Grayson used his last words to curse the warden in charge of the prison.
Grayson was convicted with three other men — all teenagers at the time — for the murder and mutilation of 37-year-old Vicki Lynn Deblieux. The woman had been hitchhiking when she was picked up by the group of teenagers. Her body was found days later at the base of a cliff.
Her daughter, Jodi Haley, was present at Holman prison on Thursday night. She described her mother at a press conference following the execution. “She was unique. She was spontaneous, she was wild. She was funny and she was gorgeous to boot,” Haley said. She said she didn’t know what it was like to have a mother while going through life events like graduation, marriage, and children — opportunities that were stolen from her.
But Haley also focused on Grayson and her stance against the death penalty. Grayson was abused “in every possible way,” including having cigarettes put out on his skin, facing physical and sexual abuse and being thrown out on the street as an adolescent, Haley said. “I have to wonder how all of this slips through the cracks of the justice system. Because society failed this man as a child and my family suffered because of it,” she said.
Haley wondered what kind of positive impact Grayson could have had on lives. The ‘eye for an eye’ justification for the death penalty “it’s not right,” Haley said. “Murdering inmates under the guise of justice needs to stop,” Haley said. “State sanctioned homicide needs never be listed as cause of death,” she said. “I don’t know who we think we are. To be in such a modern time, we regress when we implement this punishment. I hope and pray my mother’s death will invoke these changes and give her senseless death some purpose,” Haley said….
The prison warden read the death warrant and pointed the microphone to Grayson’s face to utter his last words, but then immediately backed off after Grayson said, “For you, you need to f*** off.” Grayson, at one point, also pointed up the middle finger on at least his left hand, which was visible to media witnesses. “He’s cussed out most of our employees tonight so we were not going to give him the opportunity to spew that profanity,” said Commissioner John Hamm on why the warden took away the microphone….
Grayson continued leaning his head forward following his remarks and said something in a loud manner towards what appeared the middle execution viewing room, where state officials usually sit, as a guard hung the microphone up and the warden went into a separate room to begin the execution.
The gas apparently started flowing at 6:12 p.m., followed by Grayson gasping and raising, shaking his head left to right. About 6:14 p.m., both of his legs on the gurney raised up. His movements slowed, but he had what appeared to be periodic gasps over the following six minutes when he stopped moving. At a press conference following the execution, Hamm said the first movements Grayson was doing were “all show” and the later movements were consistent with nitrogen gas executions.
Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey issued a press release following the execution, listing his time of death as 6:33 p.m. She said in a press release, “Some thirty years ago, Vicki DeBlieux’s journey to her mother’s house and ultimately, her life, were horrifically cut short because of Carey Grayson and three other men. She sensed something was wrong, attempted to escape, but instead, was brutally tortured and murdered. Even after her death, Mr. Grayson’s crimes against Ms. DeBlieux were heinous, unimaginable, without an ounce of regard for human life and just unexplainably mean. An execution by nitrogen hypoxia bares no comparison to the death and dismemberment Ms. DeBlieux experienced. I pray for her loved ones that they may continue finding closure and healing.”…
Deblieux was kidnapped while hitchhiking from Chattanooga to see her mother in Louisiana. She accepted a ride from Grayson, Kenny Loggins, Trace Duncan, and Louis Mangione on the Trussville exit of Interstate 59 on Feb. 22, 1994. Deblieux’s nude and dismembered body was found four days later at the bottom of a cliff on Bald Rock Mountain in St. Clair County.
Court records show after picking up the woman, the teens took her to an abandoned area near Medical Center East in Birmingham, where they all drank. At some point, the teens attacked and killed Deblieux, drove her body to St. Clair County, then tossed her body and luggage off the cliff.
Given what now seems to be Alabama’s repeated success with using nitrogen gas as an execution method, it will be interesting to see if other jurisdictions may make more robust efforts to adopt this method (or whether death row defendants might argue more robstly that this method must be provided as a more humane alternative to lethal injection).