Carrie Grayson was executed in a controversial manner in 1994 after being found guilty of murdering a hitchhiker.
A man convicted of murdering a hitchhiker 30 years ago has become the third person to be executed by nitrogen gas in the United States.
Carrie Grayson, 50, was executed in Alabama on Thursday after the U.S. Supreme Court denied her request for a stay on the grounds that asphyxiation by nitrogen gas was cruel and unusual punishment.
Grayson was sentenced to death in 1994 for torturing, beating and mutilating hitchhiker Vickie Lynn Deblieux while she was traveling to her mother’s home in Louisiana.
Deblieux’s mutilated body was found with 180 stab wounds, one of her lungs had been removed and her fingers and thumb had been cut off.
“Justice was served tonight,” Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall said in a statement.
Alabama has executed three death row inmates with nitrogen gas this year and is the only state in the country to use the controversial method.
Alabama officials described nitrogen asphyxiation as the least painful and humane method of execution, while critics likened the execution to torture.
According to US media reports, during the execution, Grayson shook his head from side to side, pulled at the restraints of the stretcher, and gasped for several minutes until he died.
Alabama Department of Corrections Director John Q Hamm said after the execution that Grayson’s movements appeared to have been “for show.”
A group of United Nations experts on Thursday called for a ban on executions by nitrogen gas, saying they violate international law.
“We emphasize that the prohibition on torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment is absolute, completely unacceptable and does not depend on alternatives,” the experts said in a statement released by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.
Of the 50 states in the United States, 21, including Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Georgia, allow the death penalty.
So far this year, US authorities have executed 22 people.
