Alabama carries out nation’s third nitrogen gas execution on a man for a hitchhiker’s killing

Associated Press

ATMORE, Ala. (AP) — An Alabama man convicted in the 1994 killing of a female hitchhiker cursed at the prison warden and made obscene gestures before being put to death in the nation’s third execution using nitrogen gas. Fifty-year-old Carey Dale Grayson was pronounced dead shortly after 6:30 p.m. Thursday at a south Alabama prison after the use of the new execution method. At the time, Grayson was one of four teens convicted of killing 37-year-old Vickie DeBlieux as she was hitchhiking through Alabama on her way to her mother’s home in Louisiana. The woman was attacked, beaten and thrown off a cliff. It was the third execution in the U.S. using nitrogen gas, all carried out in Alabama this year.