WASHINGTON: An Alabama man convicted of killing a hitchhiker was executed with nitrogen gas on Thursday, officials said, the third use of the controversial execution method in the southern US state this year.
The state prison authority said in a statement that the execution of Carrie Grayson (49 years old) was carried out at the William Holman Correctional Facility in the town of Atmore, where he was pronounced dead at 6:33 pm local time.
“Alabama successfully used nitrogen hypoxia to carry out the execution of Carrie Grayson,” Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall said in a statement. “Tonight, justice was served.”
Grayson was sentenced to death for the 1994 murder of Vicki W., 37, who was killed while traveling from Tennessee to visit her mother in Louisiana.
Media witnesses said Grayson cursed at a prison guard when asked if he had a final statement and made an obscene gesture.
They said Grayson shook his head from side to side when gas began flowing into the mask over his face. He gasped for several minutes before he stopped moving and was pronounced dead.
Grayson’s last meal included soft tacos, a beef burrito, guacamole and Mountain Dew Blast, the prison authority said.
Grayson, who was 19 at the time, and three other teens offered W a ride, but instead took her to a wooded area where they beat her to death and mutilated her body, according to court documents.
She was stabbed 180 times, one of her lungs was removed, and her fingers and thumb were cut off.
“More than 30 years ago, Grayson and his accomplices brutally murdered a complete stranger and mutilated her body,” Marshall’s statement said. “It takes a really evil monster to commit this kind of crime.”
Grayson was sentenced to death while the other three participants in the murder, who were under 18 at the time of the crime, will serve life imprisonment.
The state of Alabama carried out the first execution in the United States using nitrogen gas in January, and then carried out a second execution in September.
The execution is carried out by pumping nitrogen gas into the mask, which causes the prisoner to suffocate.
Grayson chose nitrogen gas for the method of execution rather than lethal injection.
United Nations experts urged Alabama state authorities on Wednesday to halt the execution.
“This method may amount to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, or even torture,” the eight independent UN human rights experts said in a joint statement.
“We reiterate our call for an urgent ban on executions by nitrogen asphyxiation, which is clearly prohibited under international law,” said the experts, who were appointed by the UN Human Rights Council but do not speak on behalf of the United Nations.
More broadly, they called on the United States to “join the growing global consensus toward the global abolition of the death penalty, starting with an immediate moratorium on executions.”
The death penalty has been abolished in 23 of the 50 US states, while it has been suspended in six other states – Arizona, California, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania and Tennessee.
21 executions were carried out in the United States this year.