Alabama is set to execute 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.

As of Thursday morning, 50-year-old Grayson was awaiting word from the U.S. Supreme Court, which he has asked to halt the execution. Grayson’s execution is to be carried out using the relatively new method of pumping nitrogen gas into a mask fitted over an inmate’s face and suffocating him to death.

He’s also awaiting word on a last minute request to have a federal judge order the state to give him a strong sedative before the execution.

It would be the third nitrogen gas execution carried out in the United States – all by Alabama.

The execution is to take place at the William C. Hollman Correctional Facility in Atmore beginning at 6 p.m. Thursday. It would be the sixth execution by Alabama this year – the other three by lethal injection – and the most in a single year in more than a decade.

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.

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The crime

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.

According to testimony in the teens’ 1996 trials, Mangione went home while the other three returned to the scene and mutilated her body. They stabbed Deblieux’s body more than 180 times, cut open her chest cavity, severed her fingers, and more. The teens later gave a finger to Mangione, who showed it to other friends who then contacted police.

All of the bones in Deblieux’s face and head were broken, and all but one tooth was missing. She was identified by an old X-ray of her spine.

Grayson was 19 at the time of the slaying. Mangione was 16, while Loggins and Duncan were both 17.

Conviction and sentence

Although different versions of who was the “ringleader” of the attack at their trials, Grayson, Loggins and Duncan were all convicted and Jefferson County Circuit Judge Mike McCormick sentenced those three to death.

Grayson’s sentence came after a unanimous recommendation from the jury.

The judge sentenced Mangione to life in prison without parole. But years later, Loggins and Duncan had their sentences changed to life in prison after the 2003 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that says juveniles (17 or younger) can’t be sentenced to death. Justice Antonin Scalia cited the Deblieux case in his dissent in that ruling of teens that commit murder “that involve truly monstrous acts.”

After a separate ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court, Duncan and Loggins had yet more hearings to allow a judge the opportunity to grant them a possibility of parole in the future.

Loggins was not given the chance of parole; Duncan will be eligible for parole in 2029.

Mangione was also made eligible for parole in 2029 after an appeal.

Deblieux

Vicki Deblieux’s half-brother, Mike Deblieux, told AL.com on Wednesday he hopes Grayson asks for forgiveness and that “God has mercy on his soul.”

But Mike Deblieux said he’s for the death penalty. “An eye for an eye… What they did to her, I think they all should have been put to death,” he said.

“It was horrific what they did,” Mike Deblieux added. He said he knows from reading about the trial that the boys were “on drugs and they’re taking pills and drinking and probably not in their right mind at the time, but you know, there’s no excuse for that and you got to account for your actions.”

Though, the younger Deblieux said he understands the legal reasons why the others are not on death row.

He does not know any family members who plan to attend Grayson’s execution. Mike Deblieux said he and Vicki’s mother is still alive, but is not attending. The half-siblings have different fathers.

Mike Deblieux doesn’t remember much about Vicki, who moved with her mother to the Monroe area of Louisiana after their parents divorced when he was about 7 and Vicki was about 14. He stayed behind with his other siblings. “So, you know, I have just a few memories of her growing up,” he said.

“My mother still thinks about it today. I mean, it’s affected her whole life, …I just remember when it happened, it was devastating to all of us, really. Just hard to believe it happened.”

Vicki had two daughters who would probably have been in their late teens at the time she was killed, Mike Deblieux said.

Mike Deblieux said he recalled his half-sister was living up in Chattanooga around the time of her death.

“What she was doing there (Chattanooga), I have no clue. I know she was trying to get back home to see my mother – her mother. But, you know, I guess she didn’t have the means, so she was trying to hitchhike back (to Louisiana),” Deblieux said.

Appeals

The latest appeals in Grayson’s case have centered on Alabama’s new method of using nitrogen gas to suffocate him. He and other death row inmates had previously sued in 2012 to prevent his execution by lethal injection and later when nitrogen gas was announced, he was among the inmates who signed up for that method.

However, critics — citing how the first two people executed shook for several minutes — say the nitrogen gas method needs more scrutiny, particularly if other states follow Alabama’s path and adopt the new execution method.

In its appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court and request to halt the execution, attorneys with the Middle District of Alabama Federal Public Defenders Office representing Grayson say the case has national significance.

“Grayson’s petition for writ of certiorari (review) raises issues of national importance among the 27 states that permit capital punishment and the federal government: whether the Eighth Amendment prohibits suffocating a conscious prisoner and whether a state’s refusal to prevent conscious suffocation via a novel method of execution superadds terror and pain in violation of the Eighth Amendment.”

The Alabama Attorney General’s Office has maintained that execution by nitrogen hypoxia is constitutional and the prior executions have gone according to plan. “What is generally uncontested from the evidence is that the ADOC’s (prison system’s) nitrogen hypoxia protocol has been successfully used twice, and both times it resulted in a death within a matter of minutes.”

When media witnesses described the first inmate – Kenneth Smith – executed by nitrogen hypoxia as having writhed on the gurney, “what the journalists who described Smith writhing did not know was that when Smith was first moving on the gurney, he had not breathed in any nitrogen gas. That suggests his movements were voluntary or associated with holding his breath.”

If the execution proceeds, Grayson’s lawyers are seeking a strong sedative.

Late Wednesday, attorneys for Grayson filed a request asking U.S. District Judge Austin Huffaker to order the prison system to give Grayson the medication.

“At approximately 1:00 p.m. on November 20, 2024, Mr. Grayson had a telehealth appointment with the prison mental health care provider,” according to the motion from Grayson’s attorneys. “During that appointment, Mr. Grayson expressed his severe and increasing anxiety and distress about his execution by nitrogen hypoxia and asked if a sedative could be provided prior to his execution. The provider made no medical assessment, but simply told him it was ‘too late’ to make such a request.”

Grayson then submitted a “sick call” slip to prison health officials. “He noted his Xanax is no longer providing relief from the increasing anxiety he feels about his execution. He got a physical exam shortly after 4:30 p.m. and was told he would be referred to the prison mental health provider who had already denied the request.

The motion reiterates that prison officials previously presented testimony “that a condemned prisoner could receive a sedative via prison health services if it was therapeutically appropriate before an execution. This Court relied on that representation and testimony in denying a preliminary injunction (to halt the execution).”

That testimony came from the leader of the health services wing of the department at a federal hearing in October.

Huffaker this morning set an emergency hearing for 11:30 a.m. to consider the motion.

AL.com reporter Ivana Hrynkiw contributed to this report.