By The Opinion
Nov 22, 2024, 10:51 AM EST
Execution through the use of nitrogen gas has been in the midst of controversy in the United States, because critics of this measure claim that it is equivalent to torture.
Despite this, the authorities of the state of Alabama have not stopped the death sentences under this method, and this Thursday the third of them was carried out.
The prisoner, Carey Dale Grayson50, was pronounced dead at 6:33 p.m. (local time) at the William Holman Correctional Center in Atmore. This is the sixth execution carried out in Alabama so far this year, the most in more than a decade, according to AL.com.
Just one day before Grayson was executed, United Nations experts in Geneva called for nitrogen hypoxia (asphyxiation with this gas) to be banned “urgently.”
The group of experts, according to EFE, had already denounced the severe suffering suffered by Kenneth Eugene Smithsentenced to death for more than three decades for murder, when he was executed last January by placing a mask over his face to administer nitrogen instead of oxygen to breathe.
Smith “It took him more than 20 minutes to die, he writhed and convulsed on the stretcher” after being forced to breathe only nitrogen, which deprived his brain and other tissues of oxygen and caused his death, experts said.
Why was he sentenced to death?
Grayson, who spent his last words cursing the warden in charge of the prison, was convicted along with three other men (all of them teenagers at the time) of the murder and mutilation of Vicki Lynn Deblieuxa 37-year-old woman who was hitchhiking on an Alabama highway to visit her mother in Louisiana.
The woman’s body was found naked and dismembered four days later on a cliff.
The defendant’s attorney, Kacey Keeton, said the convict, whom They took away his microphone after insulting prison officialswanted to express how sorry he was for it after more than 30 years, and his disappointment with the system, as detailed by Europa Press.
Alabama Governor Key Ivey stated that an execution by nitrogen hypoxia cannot be compared to the death and dismemberment that Deblieux experienced. “I pray for their loved ones so that they can continue to find relief and healing,” the official said.
Alabama is one of three US states that allows nitrogen hypoxia as an alternative to lethal injection and other traditional methods of capital punishment. Oklahoma and Mississippi are the other states that have authorized this type of capital punishment.
Keep reading:
– “I have caused so much damage”: The last words of a murderer of 5 people executed in Alabama.
– Why Alabama is the most radical state in the United States to punish with the death penalty.