Carey Dale Grayson’s final meal and chilling gestures before nitrogen gas execution

Carey Dale Grayson was the third person in the United States to be executed using nitrogen gas, which took place on Thursday evening. Grayson had been convicted in 1994 for the murder of a female hitchhiker who was on her way to her mother’s home in Louisiana. 
Before his execution, the Alabama inmate, who was found guilty of killing the hitchhiker, shouted curses at the prison warden and made obscene gestures with his hands.
Death row last meals can be denied for health reasons. 
Grayson refused breakfast and lunch throughout the day, though he still drank coffee and Mountain Dew, according to the Alabama Real-Time News. 
As his final meal, he had: a seafood platter, soft tacos, beef burritos, tostada, chips with guacamole, and a Mountain Dew Blast from local restaurants. 
His attorneys Matt Schulz, Kacey Keeton, and Robin Konrad, made the last visits.
Grayson, 50,  was one of four teens at the time convicted of killing Vickie Deblieux, 37. The woman was attacked, beaten, and thrown off a cliff.
Strapped to a gurney with a blue-rimmed gas mask strapped to his face, Grayson raised both of his middle fingers and cursed at the prison warden Thursday evening. When the prison warden asked for his final statement, Grayson responded with an obscenity. The warden turned off the microphone. Grayson appeared to address the witness room with state officials.
It was unclear when the gas began flowing. Grayson shook and pulled against the gurney restraints. His sheet-wrapped legs at one point lifted off the gurney in the air. He then clenched his fist and appeared to struggle to try to gesture again, then took a series of gasping breaths for several minutes before becoming still.
Grayson was pronounced dead at 6:33 p.m.
Alabama began using nitrogen gas earlier this year to carry out some executions. The method involves placing a respirator gas mask over the person’s face to replace breathable air with pure nitrogen gas, causing death by lack of oxygen.
The execution was carried out hours after the U.S. Supreme Court turned down Grayson’s request for a stay. His attorneys had argued that the method needed more scrutiny before being used again.
Deblieux’s mutilated body was found at the bottom of a bluff near Odenville, Alabama, on Feb. 26, 1994. She was hitchhiking from Chattanooga, Tennessee, to her mother’s home in West Monroe, Louisiana, when the four teens offered her a ride. Prosecutors said the teens took her to a wooded area and attacked and beat her. They threw her off a cliff and later returned to mutilate her body.
A medical examiner testified that Deblieux’s face was so fractured that an earlier X-ray of her spine identified her. Investigators said the teens were identified as suspects after one of them showed a friend one of Deblieux’s severed fingers and boasted about the killing.
Gov. Kay Ivey issued a statement minutes after Thursday’s execution saying she was praying for the murder victim’s loved ones to find closure and healing still decades after the crime.
“Some thirty years ago, Vicki DeBlieux’s journey to her mother’s house and ultimately, her life, were horrifically cut short because of Carey Grayson and three other men. She sensed something was wrong, attempted to escape, but instead, was brutally tortured and murdered,” Ivey said in the statement.
Grayson’s crimes “were heinous, unimaginable, without an ounce of regard for human life and just unexplainably mean. An execution by nitrogen hypoxia (bears) no comparison to the death and dismemberment Ms. DeBlieux experienced,” she added.
Grayson was the only one of the four teens who faced a death sentence since the other teens were under 18 at the time of the killing. Grayson was 19.
Two of the teens were initially sentenced to death, but those sentences were set aside when the Supreme Court banned the execution of offenders who were younger than 18 at the time of their crimes.
Another teen involved in Deblieux’s killing was sentenced to life in prison.