Carey Dale Grayson

Carey Dale Grayson entered the chamber on November 21, 2024 as the third man in world history to be killed by nitrogen gas — and the first to publicly refuse the state's script. As the warden read the death warrant, Grayson cursed at him and raised both middle fingers to the witness room. Witnesses recorded the gesture as an act of resistance held past the moment gas began to flow.

What followed was the longest sustained physical struggle yet documented in a nitrogen execution to that point. For more than eight minutes, Grayson's body pulled against the restraints. His breathing was audible through the glass. Reporters from the AP, AL.com, the Alabama Reflector, and Reuters described a scene that made the state's earlier assurances impossible to reconcile with what they were watching. Alabama Corrections Commissioner John Q. Hamm — who had already publicly dismissed visible distress in nitrogen executions as 'all show' — did not walk back the characterization afterward.

Grayson's case also carried the sharpest constitutional irony of the eight. He was one of four teenagers convicted of the 1994 murder of Vickie Deblieux. His three co-defendants — 17 years old at the time — had their sentences commuted under Roper v. Simmons. Grayson, 19 at the time of the crime, was separated from the constitutional shelter of Roper by a matter of months. He alone was killed.