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On February 21, 1994, in Jefferson County, Alabama, United States, 37-year-old Vickie Deblieux[d] (April 18, 1956 – February 22, 1994) was kidnapped, tortured and murdered by a group of four youths while she was hitchhiking from Tennessee to her mother's house in Louisiana. Deblieux's body was discovered four days after the murder, and the police later managed to arrest all four killers responsible.[1]
| Date | February 21 – February 22, 1994 |
|---|---|
| Location | Jefferson County, Alabama, U.S. |
| Deaths | Vickie Deblieux, 37 |
| Convicted | Carey Dale Grayson, 19 Kenneth Loggins, 17 Trace Royal Duncan, 17 Louis Christopher Mangione, 16 |
| Convictions | Capital murder (all 4) |
| Sentence | Grayson Death (1996) Loggins Death (1996), commuted to life in prison without the possibility of parole (2006)[a] Duncan Death (1996), later commuted to life in prison with the possibility of parole after 35 years[b] Mangione Life in prison with the possibility of parole after 35 years[c] |
One of the four perpetrators, Louis Mangione, who was 16 at the time of the murder, was given a life sentence, while the remaining three members of the group were sentenced to death for murder. However, two of them, Kenneth Loggins and Trace Duncan, were 17 at the time of the offense. Their death sentences were commuted to life imprisonment in 2006, after Alabama agreed to change the law and prohibit the execution of minors younger than 18 at the time of their offenses, leaving the final member, Carey Dale Grayson, to remain on death row.[2][3]
Grayson's death warrant has since been approved by the Supreme Court, and he has been scheduled to be executed by nitrogen gas inhalation on November 21, 2024. Grayson is slated to be the third person to undergo execution by nitrogen gas in Alabama, after Kenneth Eugene Smith and Alan Eugene Miller.[4][5]
Vickie Deblieux | |
|---|---|
| Born | Vicki Lynn DeBlieux April 18, 1956 |
| Died | February 22, 1994 (aged 37) |
| Resting place | Mulhearn Memorial Park Cemetery |
| Known for | Victim of a kidnapping and murder case |
| Children | 2 |
On the night of February 21, 1994, 37-year-old Vicki Lynn DeBlieux, better known as Vickie Deblieux, was dropped off by a friend near Chattanooga, Tennessee and began hitchhiking to her mother's house in Louisiana. That was the last time she was seen alive.[6]
While she was passing through Jefferson County, Alabama, Deblieux encountered a group of four youths, who were all drinking alcohol and using drugs when they first met her. The four youths – 19-year-old Carey Dale Grayson, 17-year-old Trace Royal Duncan, 16-year-old Louis Christopher Mangione, and 17-year-old Kenneth Loggins (Kenny Loggins or Kenney Loggins) – offered her a ride to Louisiana. However, while they were driving in the van, the group deviated from the route and instead took Deblieux to a wooded area, on the pretense of picking up another vehicle.[6]
After reaching the forest, the four boys began to drink and threw their beer bottles at Deblieux, who tried to escape. The boys managed to restrain her and tackled her to the ground and they started to physically assault Deblieux by kicking her repeatedly all over her body. When they noticed that the victim was still alive, Grayson and one of his younger friends (Loggins) stood on the throat of Deblieux, who gurgled blood and later died as a result in the early hours of February 22, 1994.[6][7][8]
After murdering Deblieux, the four kept her luggage and body inside the back of a pickup truck and drove to Bald Rock Mountain, where they pilfered her ring and clothes and sexually abused her body before throwing it off the cliff. The body was left behind while the youths drove the truck to Pell City to clean the vehicle and remove the bloodstains. They also disposed of Deblieux's luggage in the woods. The four drove back to Birmingham, where Mangione was dropped off home before the rest – Grayson, Duncan, and Loggins – returned to Bald Rock Mountain, where the trio mutilated Deblieux's corpse by stabbing and cutting the corpse 180 times, and they also amputated the fingers, thumbs, and part of Deblieux's lung.[6][9]
The trio completed the grisly task and they spent the night in Birmingham by falling asleep in the truck. By daylight, Grayson's girlfriend found her boyfriend and the two others covered in mud and blood while they remained sleeping in the truck. When his girlfriend probed him about the bloodstains, Grayson lied to her that they got all the blood from a dog.[6]
On February 26, 1994, four days after she was murdered, whatever remained of Deblieux's body was discovered by three rock climbers. An autopsy revealed that the cause of death was blunt force trauma to Deblieux's head and asphyxiation was a possible contributing factor.[6]
By April 1994, all four youths were arrested and charged for the torture and murder of Vickie Deblieux.[10]
Between November 1995 and February 1996, the four offenders – Louis Mangione, Carey Dale Grayson, Kenneth Loggins, and Trace Duncan – were tried in separate state courts in Alabama for the murder of Vickie Deblieux.
On November 2, 1995, three days before his 18th birthday, Trace Duncan became the first out of the four to be convicted of murder,[11][12] and the jury recommended that Duncan should be sentenced to death. He was scheduled to be officially sentenced in January 1996.[13][14]
Louis Mangione was the second offender to be convicted on November 18, 1995. However, unlike Duncan, Mangione was spared the death sentence after the jury recommended that he be sentenced to the minimum punishment of life in prison without the possibility of parole.[15]
Kenneth Loggins was initially set to stand trial in September 1995, but his trial was delayed due to the psychologist failing to submit a report on time to determine Loggins's mental state at the time, and it was rescheduled on November 27, 1995.[16] Loggins, who pleaded innocent by insanity, was subsequently convicted in December of that same year, and among the 12-member jury, ten jurors recommended the death penalty for Loggins.[17]
Carey Dale Grayson was the final member of the four to be tried for Deblieux's murder, and his trial began on January 29, 1996.[18][19] Grayson was convicted four days later on February 2, 1996,[20][21] and six days later, the jury deliberated for 15 minutes before they unanimously returned with the recommendation of a death sentence for Grayson. The prosecution later sought to have all four youths face the death penalty for murdering Deblieux and highlighted that the brutality of the crime and gruesomeness of Deblieux's death made it deserving for all four boys to be executed. A sentencing trial for all four accused was scheduled to take place on March 8, 1996.[22]
On March 8, 1996, Circuit Judge Mike McCormick followed the jury's recommendations in the four accused's respective cases. He spared Mangione the death sentence and ordered that he be jailed for life without the possibility of parole while sentencing the remaining three accused – Grayson, Duncan, and Loggins – to death.[23][24]
In 1998, Louis Mangione's appeal against his conviction and sentence was dismissed by the Court of Criminal Appeals of Alabama.[25]
In 1999, Grayson was one of the five condemned to lose their appeals to the Court of Criminal Appeals of Alabama.[26][6] Duncan also lost his appeal in 1999 to the Court of Criminal Appeals of Alabama.[27]
In 1999, the Court of Criminal Appeals of Alabama also rejected the appeal of Loggins.[28][29] In 2000, Loggins lost his second appeal to the Alabama Supreme Court.[30]
In 2001, the Alabama Supreme Court once again upheld and therefore finalized the death sentences of the condemned trio (Grayson, Duncan, and Loggins) after dismissing their appeals.[31]
In 2005, after the U.S. Supreme Court heard the Roper v. Simmons case, a majority ruling of 5 to 4 formally decreed that it was unconstitutional to execute offenders who were below 18 at the time of their crimes.[32] This ruling made an impact on many cases of juveniles on death row, including the two teenagers (Kenneth Loggins and Trace Duncan of the 1994 Deblieux murder case), and these offenders were allowed to apply for a reduction of their death sentences to life imprisonment, given that both of them were minors at the time of the murder.[33]
In April 2005, Trace Duncan's death sentence was commuted to life in jail without any chance for parole.[34][e]
On January 28, 2006, an Alabama state court allowed the re-sentencing plea of Kenneth Loggins and commuted his death sentence to life without parole. Loggins was the 13th juvenile on death row to have his sentence reduced since 2005.[35][f]
Five years after his re-sentencing, Kenneth Loggins filed an appeal in 2011 for a further reduction of his life sentence, stating that sentencing minors to life without parole was unconstitutional, but it was dismissed.[36]
Eventually, in 2012, Alabama revised its life imprisonment laws for juveniles through the landmark ruling of Miller v. Alabama, making it unconstitutional for juveniles to serve mandatory life sentences without parole and the new laws allowed judges to decide whether or not to grant juveniles serving life sentences the possibility of parole, including the past court cases prior to 2012. Many of the juveniles serving life without parole, including Kenneth Loggins, Trace Duncan, and Louis Mangione of the 1994 Deblieux killing, applied for their life terms to carry the possibility of release on parole.[37][38]
After a series of re-sentencing hearings, both Mangione and Duncan were each granted the chance for parole after a minimum of 35 years and their earliest parole hearings would take place in 2029. However, Loggins, whose hearing took place in 2018, was denied the chance of parole and hence, his sentence of life without parole was still maintained by the courts.[39][40]
Carey Dale Grayson | |
|---|---|
| Born | August 31, 1974 Alabama, U.S. |
| Criminal status | Incarcerated on death row. Execution scheduled on November 21, 2024 |
| Conviction(s) | Murder |
| Criminal penalty | Death |
| Partner(s) | Kenneth Loggins, 17 Trace Royal Duncan, 17 Louis Christopher Mangione, 16 |
| Details | |
| Victims | Vickie Deblieux, 37 (deceased) |
| Date | February 21 – February 22, 1994 |
| Country | U.S. |
| State(s) | Alabama |
The re-sentencing of both Duncan and Loggins left Carey Dale Grayson, who was 19 at the time of the murder, the only convict of the case to remain on death row for murdering Vickie Deblieux.
After exhausting all avenues of appeal in the state appeal process in 2006, Grayson brought forward his case to federal court and filed a plea of habeas corpus in the Northern District of Alabama, but the motion was rejected in September 2009. A year later, in October 2010, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals rejected Grayson's appeal, and another year later, the U.S. Supreme Court ultimately dismissed Grayson's final appeal and confirmed his death sentence.[41]
Originally, Grayson was scheduled to be put to death by lethal injection on April 12, 2012,[42] but his execution was postponed by the Alabama Supreme Court after his lawyers appealed to challenge the change of drug use in the lethal injection protocols of Alabama.[43] In 2015, Grayson was one of five death row prisoners who filed a lawsuit opposing the state authorities' bid to administer large doses of midazolam in lethal injection executions.[44]
While Grayson was still incarcerated on death row, the laws of Alabama allowed the state to carry out executions by either lethal injection or nitrogen gas inhalation as early as 2018, making it possible for Grayson to choose either method to facilitate his impending execution, for which a date had yet to be set.[45]
In June 2024, five months after Alabama's first nitrogen gas execution, a motion by the attorney general's office was filed to seek approval of Grayson's second death warrant; the representatives of the state asked for Grayson's execution to be carried out with nitrogen gas, which was the third time where Alabama would possibly carry out an execution by nitrogen hypoxia. Grayson had reportedly elected to be executed by nitrogen gas inhalation in 2018, based on court documents presented in the hearing. However, there were lingering concerns over the effectiveness of the nitrogen gas execution, as it was reported that the first person put to death via this method had convulsed in "seizure-like spasms" and gasped for breath minutes before falling motionless, although government officials defended this method by stating there were no major problems arising from this method and it was "textbook".[46][47][9]
On August 15, 2024, the Alabama Supreme Court approved the death warrant for Grayson, and a court order was issued for the Alabama Governor Kay Ivey to authorize his death warrant.[48][49]
Five days after the Supreme Court approved Grayson's death warrant, his death sentence was scheduled to be carried out via nitrogen hypoxia on November 21, 2024, making him the third person in Alabama to face a nitrogen gas execution after Kenneth Eugene Smith on January 25 and Alan Eugene Miller on September 26.[50][51] A 30-hour time window was set between midnight of November 21, 2024, and 6:00 a.m. of November 22, 2024, for the execution to be carried out.[52]
Days after the death warrant was issued, Grayson's lawyers filed a legal motion and sought to stave off the impending execution, citing that Grayson should not be put to death by nitrogen gas due to potential problems with the new execution method, noting that there were witness statements that Kenneth Eugene Smith, the first convicted killer executed with this method in Alabama, had allegedly experienced seizure-like spasms, and this could amount to cruel and unusual punishment since it did not guarantee a painless death for Grayson. This motion is currently pending before the courts.[53][54]
On October 9, 2024, it was reported that Grayson's lawyers proposed amendments to the nitrogen gas execution protocols to ensure that his death sentence would be carried out smoothly. They also requested that the execution not be conducted via nitrogen hypoxia.[55]
On November 6, 2024, U.S. District Judge R. Austin Huffaker Jr. rejected Grayson's appeal to cancel his scheduled execution.[56][57]
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