Attorneys for Demetrius Frazier, the man slated to be executed next month for the 1991 rape and murder of a Birmingham woman, are asking to halt his execution, claiming the state's protocol for nitrogen hypoxia violates the U.S. Constitution.
Frazier would be the fourth person executed in Alabama using nitrogen hypoxia. Attorneys for the three previous recipients also argued Constitutional violations in the process, to no avail.
In the court filing seeking a preliminary injunction against the execution, attorneys point to media witnesses of the previous executions, who stated that the recipients shook and moved during the process. The attorneys claim the movements were indicative of suffering on the part of the inmates and, therefore, violated the Eighth Amendment.
Officials with the Alabama Department of Corrections (ADOC) have claimed that the movements experienced by the inmates were involuntary and not indicative of consciousness or pain experienced in the process.
Frazier, 52, was convicted in 1996 of capital murder for the 1991 killing of Pauline Brown. The jury, by a vote of 10-2, recommended the death penalty.
Governor Kay Ivey set the time frame of the execution to start at midnight on Thursday, February 6, and expire on Friday, February 7. If successful, Frazier will be the state's first execution of 2025.
According to court records, Frazier was arrested on an unrelated charge in Detroit, Michigan, in March 1992. While in the custody of the Detroit Police Department, Frazier reportedly confessed to the murder of a woman in Birmingham. A Birmingham detective then traveled to Detroit, where Frazier reportedly again admitted to the murder on tape.
According to Frazier's reported statements, on the night of the murder, he saw a light on in Brown's ground-floor apartment at the Fountain Heights Apartment complex. After finding under $10 in the home, he entered Brown's room, where she slept. After awakening her with a .22 caliber pistol, he demanded more money. After receiving $80 from Brown's purse, things turned for the worse.
"Frazier then forced [Brown] at gunpoint to have sexual intercourse with him," Court records state. "While he was raping her, Ms. Brown begged Frazier not to kill her. When Ms. Brown refused to stop begging for her life, Frazier put the pistol to the back of her head and fired the gun. Fearing that someone had heard the gunshot, Frazier left the apartment. He went across the street to see if anyone had heard the shot. Satisfied that no one had heard the shot, he returned to the apartment. He searched the apartment for more money and confirmed that Ms. Brown was dead. He then went to the kitchen, ate two bananas, and left the apartment. He threw the pistol in a ditch."
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