Alabama inmate Demetrius Frazier set to die by nitrogen; Michigan governor hasn’t acted
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An Alabama Death Row inmate is set to be executed tonight for the 1991 slaying of a woman in her Birmingham apartment, a woman he admitted to killing after he got tired of hearing her beg for her life.
Demetrius Terrence Frazier is set to die sometime within a 30-hour-period starting at midnight on Thursday, Feb. 6 and ending at 6 a.m. on Feb. 7. The 52-year-old is set to die by inhaling pure nitrogen gas, and would be the fourth inmate in Alabama—and the country—to be executed using that method. It is Alabama’s first execution for 2025 after having led the nation in 2024 with six executions -by either lethal injection or nitrogen gas.
Frazier’s lawyers are hoping that before Frazier is escorted into the execution chamber at William C. Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer will ask Alabama to halt the execution and send Frazier back north.
Prior to being transferred to the Yellowhammer State in 2011, Frazier was serving multiple life sentences in Michigan for sex crimes and the murder of a 14-year-old girl. Frazier’s lawyers have argued that his transfer to Alabama Death Row was illegal, and he should be serving his life sentences up north. While that battle is no longer being waged in court, Frazier is hoping the Michigan governor steps in.
Frazier’s lawsuit over the Michigan transfer matter was dismissed, and his other legal move that sought to have a judge either call off the execution or order the Alabama Department of Corrections to administer a sedative before turning on the nitrogen gas was denied. His lawyers didn’t appeal that decision.
It was during the investigation of the 14-year-old girls murder that Frazier admitted to an earlier killing in Alabama.
Pauline Starks Brown’s killing
Brown was a daughter, sister, mother, and had recently become a grandmother. She had worked for 20 years as a cook at Bama Foods.
That was before she was raped and shot in the back of the head, killed in the early morning hours of November 27, 1991. She had been discussing with her mom the plans for Thanksgiving, which was only two days away.
“Pauline was 40 years old, in the prime of her life, had raised her two daughters. Six weeks ago Phyllis had her baby; she would have been a grandmother for the first time,” said prosecutor Roger Brown during Frazier’s trial nearly 30 years ago.
“And that grandbaby will never see grandmother because Demetrius Frazier got tired of listening to Pauline beg.”
According to court records, Frazier saw a light on in Brown’s Fountain Heights apartment early that morning. He took a screen off a window in the ground floor apartment and climbed in. He searched the apartment for money, but didn’t find much.
At some point, and while armed with a gun, he woke up a sleeping Brown. He demanded money, and she gave him about $80 from her purse. Frazier then forcibly raped Brown and, after she begged him not to kill her, shot her at close range.
According Frazier’s police statements, which were used at his 1996 trial, he was tired of hearing Brown plead for her life. According to reporting from The Birmingham News at the time, Frazier said in his taped confession: “She kept on making some sorry excuses why I should (not) hurt her. She kept saying she was a po’ Black woman… and I got mad.”
Records show Frazier, who was 19 at the time, then left the apartment to see if anyone heard the blast. When he didn’t see anyone outside, he went back inside the apartment. He made sure Brown was dead, looked for more cash, and ate bananas in her kitchen.
Brown’s mother, who was a longtime employee of the Birmingham Housing Authority, learned of her slaying the next day.
According to a Detroit homicide investigator, Frazier “said he hated women who whined and begged for their lives,” a report from The Birmingham News said during the trial.
A June 6, 1996 article in The Birmingham News showing a photo of Pauline Starks Brown. (Archive)File
Brown’s nephew, Curtis Starks Jr., told AL.com he plans to witness the execution on Thursday. His father, grandmother, and one of Brown’s daughters have since died.
He recalled the day of Brown’s killing, when he was in high school. He was at football practice, getting ready for the upcoming playoff game, when something didn’t feel right.
The younger Starks said he went home and his mother told him what happened to his aunt. He had just seen her the weekend before—Starks Jr. said he and his dad visited Brown and ate cornbread as they talked.
“I never knew that would be the last time I saw her,” he said.
And now, his family is still dealing with the aftermath of Brown’s murder.
“It was a terrible, terrible day. I’m 50 now, and that was in ‘91, and what happened still hurts the same,” Starks Jr. said. “Someone was taken from me, from my family. I think the thing that hurts most is this guy, Demetrius Frazier, broke into her house, raped my aunt and killed her because she was pleading for her life. That’s the most devastating thing for us.”
Brown was an integral part of their close-knit family, her nephew said. She was a cook—like everyone in their family, he said laughing. But of everyone, she made the best red velvet cake. It took Starks Jr. years before he could even eat the confection again.
“Our whole family remembers our aunt.”
Behavior
Frazier’s erratic behavior during his 1996 trial in Birmingham consisted of throwing things, cursing his jury, spewing claims of racism and accusing his own attorneys of being undercover prosecutors before threatening them, too.
In court records, Frazier’s former lawyers said before his 1996 trial that he “had several incidents… (of) uncontrollable violent behavior… which may indicate the onset of some mental disease or disorder,” and that Frazier had “become very difficult to communicate with.”
The judge denied the lawyers’ ask to have a mental evaluation before trial.
On the second day of his trial during the summer of 1996, according to court records, Frazier refused to wear a leg brace—which was concealed under his pants and designed to limit any quick movements in case he became violent. When the judge asked him why he was refusing the leg brace, Frazier was silent.
“Well, I’m going to give you a choice, you can either wear the leg brace or you can wear the shackles and the handcuffs. Obviously sitting there with shackles and handcuffs is not going to impress the jury very much; in fact, it would prejudice your case,” said former Jefferson County Circuit Judge Mike McCormick, according to trial transcripts.
“I don’t want to do that. In fact, I have never done that in the 15 years I’ve been on the bench. And most people understand that it hurts their case to do that, [and it is] an unreasonable position to take. Do you have anything to say?”
Frazier didn’t respond to the judge, nor his attorneys, for a while. Eventually, he said:
“Don’t make me no difference, go on with y’all, do what you got to do… I don’t care, don’t make me no difference. I don’t even want to be in the courtroom for my hearing.”
When his lawyer attempted to intervene, Frazier said, “I don’t want to talk to you. I don’t want to be in the courtroom, either.”
He asked to be put in the “hole” at the county jail, and said he didn’t trust his legal team.
“Plus I got a all mother-f****** white jury. I don’t — I got 10 white jurors and 4 black jurors. I don’t even want to sit in trial with them. I don’t trust that jury. I don’t trust the lawyers, either. I think them with the other prosecutors… And I don’t see I’m going to get a fair trial with them white jurors up there with you. We in Birmingham right now. This city majority, this city right here majority black, and I got 10 mother-f****** white jurors, a white jury.”
He continued asking to be put in the jail. “Because right now I’m mad, I’m real mad right now, I’m real mad. There ain’t no telling what I might do when I get back… I’m giving you a warning, I’m just letting you know. Like I say, I’m really mad right now. I might slap the shit out of my lawyer right there.”
He admitted guilt multiple times to Brown’s slaying during that talk with the judge, transcripts show.
When the jury was finally brought into the courtroom, Frazier threw a pen at the jury and narrowly missed a juror. “Shut the f*** up. That jury right there is racist, man. That jury is racist, man, look at them. That guy looking at me, man. That jury is racist, man.”
He was escorted out of the room.
An AP photo from The Birmingham News shows Demetrius Frazier surrounded by police during his trial in Detroit. (File)AP Photo
After Frazier’s outburst, the judge moved the trial to another courtroom, where Frazier could watch the proceedings from an enclosed soundproof box typically reserved for members of the media.
But the Alabama Supreme Court wrote that Frazier’s attitude wasn’t a sign of mental illness. His “violent outburst and his belligerent, disrespectful, and suspicious behavior toward the court, the jury, and his counsel all appear to be the result of a bad temper and poor judgment — not a lack of competency to stand trial.”
During the trial, Frazier’s audio confession was played. Records show that two of Brown’s family members—her daughter and her mother—became emotional. “Why you did that, why did you hurt mama like that? Why you do her like that?” said one of Brown’s daughters.
And her mother uttered, “That’s my baby. Oh, mercy, I can’t take that. I can’t take no more.”
Both family members were escorted out of the courtroom.
But one of Frazier’s lawyers argued in his closing arguments that no one might have ever known who killed Brown if Frazier hadn’t confessed.
After the jury convicted Frazier, they recommended he be sent to death row on a 10-2 vote.
At the time, Brown’s brother Curtis Starks told The Birmingham News, “It was a great relief to the family to get him convicted… He’s a serial rapist who just kills somebody when they make him mad.”
Michigan crimes and sentences
Frazier’s lawyers had previously asked a federal judge to order he be brought back to Michigan to finish serving his life sentences there. But after the Michigan prison system said they didn’t want Frazier back, the lawyers dropped the case.
Frazier was arrested in Michigan in 1992, months after Brown’s killing. After Brown’s death, Frazier returned to his home city of Detroit and, according to court records, took 14-year-old Crystal Kendrick into a vacant house, preparing to rape her at gunpoint. But as he undid his pants, the teen fled. Frazier went after her and shot her in the head.
He was arrested days later in Detroit. According to the Alabama Attorney General’s Office, at the time of his arrest Frazier had a slew of pending charges including 15 counts of first-degree criminal sexual conduct.
During his talks with police in Michigan in 1992, Frazier admitted to Brown’s slaying in Alabama.
Frazier was convicted in Michigan the next year for criminal sexual conduct, robbery, the teenager’s slaying. There, he was given three life sentences. During court proceedings there, reporting from The Birmingham News in 1996 showed, Frazier attempted an escape, hit a prosecutor in the jaw, and lunged at jurors.
In 1995, Michigan authorities brought Frazier to Alabama, where he was tried for Brown’s killing, found guilty and sentenced to death. The Michigan authorities then brought him back north, where he was imprisoned.
But in 2011, then-Govs. Robert Bentley of Alabama and Rick Snyder of Michigan created an executive agreement to transfer Frazier to Alabama, according to documents signed by the governors.
In a lawsuit, Frazier’s lawyers from the Federal Defenders Office argued his “Michigan life sentences have not been commuted and he has not been pardoned.” And the northern state’s law says, according to the lawyers, that an inmate like Frazier “shall not be eligible for custodial incarceration outside a state correctional facility or a county jail.”
Michigan does not have the death penalty.
Carol Frazier, mother of Demetrius Frazier, pleads publicly on Tuesday, Jan. 28, 2025 to Gov. Gretchen Whitmer to bring home her son Demetrius Frazier, a Detroit man convicted of rape and a separate murder of a 14-year-old in the early 1990s who was serving a life sentence when he was charged with another murder in Alabama. Carol Frazier delivered a letter to the Gov. Whitmer’s office in the George W. Romney Building in Lansing requesting she give an executive order requesting her son’s return to Michigan before he is executed as early as Feb. 6 in Alabama through the death penalty.
Jake May | MLive.com
“While Michigan takes no position on the imposition of the death penalty in this case, Michigan does not seek to return Frazier to a Michigan correctional facility,” a court filing from a Michigan Department of Corrections lawyer read.
Frazier cannot make the state take him back into custody, Michigan’s filing said. The inmate’s question about state custody, said Michigan lawyers, is one for state court and not federal court. And, they added, the executive agreement between Bentley and Snyder “boils down to a priority-of-custody matter between sovereigns.”
It called Frazier’s claim a “farfetched argument” and “decades too late.”
The Alabama Attorney General’s Office agreed, writing that the lawsuit was “a “blatant misuse of this Court to stop his execution” and called the inmate “a sexual predator.”
“The only conclusion (the state) can draw is that this is yet another attempt to sandbag the State of Alabama with meritless litigation in an effort to stop an execution.”
While the Michigan argument is no longer being fought in a courtroom, Frazier’s lawyers are still hoping Gov. Whitmer will intervene.
“You have the absolute authority to demand Mr. Frazier’s return,” the Federal Defenders Office lawyers wrote in a letter to Whitmer.
It’s the second request they’ve made of the northern governor; the first was met with a response from Whitmer’s staff, indicating the governor wouldn’t act at that time.
Death Penalty Action, an advocacy group opposed to capital punishment, prompted its members to reach out to Whitmer and ask for her to act on Wednesday.
“Last week I spent hours in the lobby of the Romney building with Carol Frazier, Demetrius Frazier’s mother, and Governor Whitmer’s staff did not have the decency to come down the elevator to look her in the eye and take her hand written letter,” Abraham Bonowitz, Executive Director of Death Penalty Action, said in a press release.
“If Governor Whitmer is going to ignore a mother from Detroit begging for the life of her child while also ignoring more than 180 years of Michigan history, she owes the people an explanation. But it’s not too late to act, and that is why we are taking one more shot at waking her up to this matter.”
Nitrogen lawsuit
Frazier’s lawyers have been challenging the state’s nitrogen gas protocol and asking a judge to either call off the execution for now, or instruct the state to give Frazier a sedative prior to the gas being pumped through the gas mask.
Specifically, the lawyers asked for 500 milligrams of midazolam—the first drug in the state’s lethal injection, three-drug cocktail.
“What we’re talking about here isn’t medical, it’s execution,” said attorney Spencer Hahn during a federal court hearing in Montgomery last month. “Let’s use part of the lethal injection protocol and import it” to the nitrogen protocol.
“They’re remaining conscious longer than (the state’s medical expert) said they would,” said Hahn about the three inmates who have been executed in Alabama using nitrogen gas.
The Alabama Attorney General’s Office’s expert anesthesiologist, who works in Los Angeles, said a person who undergoes a nitrogen execution like Alabama’s would lose consciousness in under a minute.
“The facts on the ground don’t support that,” Hahn said. “Something is going wrong… It’s not working that way.”
But U.S. Chief District Judge Emily Marks declined to stop the execution and sided with the state.
Frazier’s lawyers did not appeal the denial to the U.S. Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals.
In a move to spare Frazier’s life, his lawyers asked Gov. Kay Ivey for clemency last week. The petition, signed by attorney Matt Schulz, sought the governor to halt the execution and either commute Frazier’s sentence to life without parole or send him back to Michigan.
Carol Frazier, mother of Demetrius Frazier, pleads publicly on Tuesday, Jan. 28, 2025 to Gov. Gretchen Whitmer to bring home her son Demetrius Frazier, a Detroit man convicted of rape and a separate murder of a 14-year-old in the early 1990s who was serving a life sentence when he was charged with another murder in Alabama. Carol Frazier delivered a letter to the Gov. Whitmer’s office in the George W. Romney Building in Lansing requesting she give an executive order requesting her son’s return to Michigan before he is executed as early as Feb. 6 in Alabama through the death penalty.
Jake May | MLive.com
In the letter, Schulz wrote that Frazier was born to a teenage mother who wasn’t prepared to raise a child, and that Frazier’s mental development was behind other children his age. The family moved often and frequently lived in dangerous and impoverished neighborhoods, and Frazier witnessed violence and criminal activity from a young age.
Attached to the clemency petition were letters from several of Frazier’s family members. His mother, Carol Frazier, wrote that she loves her son and is devastated for Brown’s family. “I know that the crime he committed was terrible,” she wrote, “and I know another mother lost her daughter.”
“I know we can’t bring that poor woman back.”
Her letter, and Frazier’s sisters’ letters, say that he has expressed remorse for the slaying. They each asked Ivey to send Frazier back to Michigan to serve his life sentence.
If the execution is carried out, Frazier will be the fourth Alabama inmate to be executed by nitrogen gas.
Three Alabama inmates were put to death in 2024 using nitrogen gas: Kenneth Smith, Alan Miller, and Grayson. So far, Alabama is the only state in the country to roll out nitrogen executions.
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