The State of Alabama is preparing to conduct its third execution with nitrogen gas tonight. Carey Grayson is within hours of a death sentence for the 1994 killing of a Jefferson County woman. The use of nitrogen hypoxia is still considered controversial and experimental. We got an international view of the situation, and an explanation on how we got here…
Alabama executed Kenneth Smith in late January for a 1988 murder for hire. It was the world’s first use of nitrogen gas to carry out a death sentence.
“He suffered during his execution as the other people had suffered during the botched executions,” said Robin Mahr. She’s Executive Director of the Death Penalty Information Center in Washington, D.C. She referring to how Alabama switched to Nitrogen gas after it failed to killed Smith with lethal injection.
“So there's really not a good pattern of conduct here,” she said.
APR spoke with Mahr just before Alabama’s second nitrogen gas execution in September. That involved Alan Miller. He was sentenced to die for 1999 workplace shooting that killed three co-workers. Witnesses to the first nitrogen gas execution in January say Kenneth Smith thrashed on the gurney before suffocating.
“Alabama's decisions to use nitrogen gas to suffocate Mr. Miller to death, I think, is both reckless and irresponsible,” said Mahr. “Media witnesses who attended Kenneth Smith's execution in January said they saw clear signs of distress and suffering.
Alabama’s use of nitrogen gas to execute death row inmates generated an international response.”
“The Radio Free Europe, also the Voice of America in Serbia, Deutsche Valley. So some pro Western media outlets had that news,” added Tamara Bajcic. She’s CEO of a pro-democracy fact-checking service called Demostat. It’s based in Belgrade, Serbia which used to be part of Yugoslavia. APR first met her following an invitation from the U.S. State Department. The news team was asked to speak to a foreign delegation on avoiding news disinformation. Bajcic was part of that group.
“Some domestic very big press media outlet also had that news, but it really did not make a lot of headlines. Here. Serbia had some other problems, so back then in January. So it really, it really, it was in the media as I looked it up, but it really was not that much big news.”
Bajcic says the last time someone was executed was in 1992.
“His name was Johan drosdek, and he was the sentenced to death penalty in 1988 because of rape and murder of a six year old girl. And because of that, he was sentenced to death, and four years later, it was executed, and he was killed by firing squad,” she recalled.
Bajcic adds that Serbians supports the death penalty. Her country agreed to outlaw executions so it could join the European Union.
“There's really no method of execution that will have 100% guarantee of being humane,” said Robin Mahr of the Death Penalty Information center. We met her earlier in our story. She says there were problems leading up to the nitrogen gas execution of Alan Miller in September.
“He was sentenced to death by a non-unanimous jury that was clearly troubled even by the incomplete information they heard about Mr. Miller's abusive childhood and history of mental illness,” she said. “He was then tortured by Alabama officials who tried and failed to access vain when they first tried to execute him in 2022 using lethal injection.”
Unless the courts step in, death row inmate Carey Grayson may be next.
