BREAKING: Alabama inmate executed with 'tortuous' nitrogen gas over teen hitchhiker's 1994 kidnap and murder

An Alabama death row inmate was executed by nitrogen hypoxia, marking the third-ever execution using the highly controversial method.

Carey Dale Grayson was put to death on Thursday evening, forced to choke on an influx of the atmospheric gas that was fed to him via a mask as he was strapped to a gurney in the execution chamber at the state prison in Atmore, a small city that borders Florida that's about 50 miles north of Pensacola.

Grayson, 50, became the state's sixth execution in 2024. Grayson was convicted of killing hitchhiker Vickie Deblieux in 1994. Prosecutors said Deblieux, 37, had been hitchhiking from Tennessee to her mother's home in Louisiana when four individuals picked her up and transported her to a secluded woodland area, where they brutally attacked her, beating her before throwing her off a cliff.

The then-teenagers later returned to the scene to desecrate her body, prosecutors said, stabbing her 180 times. Grayson, Kenny Loggins and Trace Duncan were all found guilty of first-degree murder and sentenced to death.

But, because of their age at the time of the crime, Loggins and Duncan had their death sentences overturned following a 2005 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that prohibited minors from being sentenced to death for crimes.

On Thursday, Grayson's sentence was carried out despite a federal judge having heard testimonies back in October about the horrors of the nation's first two nitrogen executions, which were also carried out in Alabama.

Grayson's lawyers argued that Alabama officials should have considered making changes to the procedure, stating in court filings that they "have chosen to ignore clear and obvious signs the current protocol contains major problems."

Media witnesses to the first two nitrogen gas executions described the shock of the event as they watched inmates shake on the gurney for two minutes or longer, spasming and drawing labored breaths with long pauses in between until they died.

Alabama Corrections Commissioner John Q. Hamm testified previously that he had no concerns about how the executions were carried out in the past. He stated that involuntary movements, such as the spasms, were anticipated in his research.

The first two inmates to die by nitrogen hypoxia were Kenneth Eugene Smith and Alan Eugene Miller, who died in January and September, respectively. Rev. Dr. Jeff Hood, a spiritual adviser for many death row inmates who was in the chamber to witness the execution of Smith, described the horror he witnessed that day to TheMirror.com.

"It looked like a fish out of water. He kept heaving back and forth, back and forth. And the mask was tied to the gurney, and so every time he heaved forward, his face was hitting the front of the mask and pressing into the mask," he said. "His eyes started to bulge. He began to turn colors. He was spitting, and mucus was coming out of his mouth and his face. He kept almost hitting his face on the front of the mask."

Lethal injection is still the primary method of execution in Alabama, with inmates able to choose between that, nitrogen hypoxia and the electric chair. After Smith's execution in January, the state began to schedule dates for other inmates who opted to die by nitrogen hypoxia, too.