An Alabama death row inmate was executed Thursday evening by nitrogen gas, but not before a Tex-Mex-style last meal and a profane rant directed at the execution staff.
Carey Dale Grayson had been on death row for 28 years following the 1994 murder and mutilation of 37-year-old hitchhiker Vickie Lynn Deblieux who was traveling from Chatanooga, TN. to her mother’s home in West Monroe, LA.
Grayson’s execution began just after 6 p.m. at the William C. Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore, AL, when the curtains of the execution chamber were opened.
The 50-year-old was brought in and strapped down to the table before his death warrant was read by the prison warden.
A microphone was brought up to Grayson for his final words before he went into the rant.
“For you, you need to f–k off,” Grayson said as he pointed up his left middle finger, AL.com reported.
The microphone was immediately taken away, which Commissioner John Hamm explained was because of Grayson’s behavior towards prison staff throughout the day.
“He’s cussed out most of our employees tonight so we were not going to give him the opportunity to spew that profanity,” Hamm said, according to the outlet.
Grayson’s attorney and spiritual advisor revealed her client had more to say including admitting he committed the horrible crime and he felt sorry for it.
Grayson also went after the prison system and said the state was committing murder and are “serial killers,” Kacey Keeton told reporters after his death.
Nitrogen gas began to enter a respirator Grayson was wearing at 6:12 p.m. and flowed for 15 minutes.
As the gas was being administered, Grayson shook at times before taking a periodic series of gasping breaths.
He was pronounced dead at 6:33 p.m.
The execution is the US’ 22nd this year and 6th in Alabama.
Grayson’s death was the third time a death row inmate was executed with nitrogen gas, a controversial method where the gas replaces breathable air resulting in death by lack of oxygen.
For his last day, Grayson refused to eat breakfast and lunch, opting for coffee and Mountain Dew.
His last meal was soft tacos, beef burritos, a tostada, chips and guacamole, and a Mountain Dew Blast from local restaurants.
Grayson was part of a group of four teens who offered Deblieux a ride but abducted the mother of two and brought her to a wooded area where she was attacked and killed on Feb. 22, 1994.
The then 19-year-old Grayson, 17-year-olds Kenny Loggins and Trace Duncan, along with Louis Mangione, 16, brought the victim to an area near Medical Center East in Birmingham where the five all drank before the teens began their attack, according to AL.com.
The teens left the seen, leaving Deblieux’s body behind where Mangione was dropped off at home as the remaining three returned to the scene.
Deblieux’s body was stabbed over 180 times as the teens opened up her chest cavity, severed all her fingers and broke her face and head, while removing all but one tooth.
The teens stripped Deblieux’s corpse before throwing it off a cliff in Bald Rock Mountain in St. Clair County.
During the teens’ 1996 trial, a medical examiner testified that her face was so fractured that an earlier X-ray of her spine identified her.
Mangione was gifted one of Deblieux’s fingers, before he promptly showed it to one of his friends, who then called the police, according to the outlet.
Mangione was given a life sentence while Loggins and Duncan’s death sentences were commuted to life imprisonments in 2006, leaving Grayson the only one of the group to be executed, WKRG reported.
Deblieux’s daughter, Jodi Haley was at the execution and remembered her mother.
“She was unique. She was spontaneous, she was wild. She was funny and she was gorgeous to boot,” Haley, who was 12 when her mother died, said.
Haley said Grayson was abused his whole life, including having cigarettes put out on his skin and being sexually abused.
“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 blasted the execution saying the “eye-for-an-eye” method is “not right.”
“Murdering inmates under the guise of justice needs to stop,” she said, adding that “no one should have the right to take a person’s possibilities, days, and life.”
With Post wires