In the sixth execution using nitrogen gas in the country’s history, an Alabama man convicted of the 1988 murder of a woman was executed Tuesday night.
One of four planned this week in the United States, Gregory Hunt, 65, was declared dead at 6:26 p.m. at a prison in south Alabama, according to authorities.
Hunt was found guilty of capital murder for the August 2, 1988, death of 32-year-old Karen Lane in the Walker County apartment she lived with another woman in Cordova.
An inmate is forced to breathe pure nitrogen gas throughout the execution process, depriving them of oxygen, which is essential for survival.
In the sixth execution using nitrogen gas in the country’s history, an Alabama man convicted of the 1988 murder of a woman was executed Tuesday night.
One of four planned this week in the United States, Gregory Hunt, 65, was declared dead at 6:26 p.m. at a prison in south Alabama, according to authorities.
Hunt was found guilty of capital murder for the August 2, 1988, death of 32-year-old Karen Lane in the Walker County apartment she lived with another woman in Cordova.
An inmate is forced to breathe pure nitrogen gas throughout the execution process, depriving them of oxygen, which is essential for survival.
“What I saw has been consistent with all the other nitrogen hypoxia executions. There is involuntary body movement,” Alabama Corrections Commissioner John Hamm stated.
For over a month, Hunt and Lane had been dating.
According to the prosecution, he broke into Lane’s apartment out of jealous wrath, sexually assaulted her, and beat her to death, leaving her with 60 injuries. By a vote of 11 to 1, jurors found him guilty in 1990 and suggested that he be executed.
According to Hamm, a number of Lane’s family members were present at the execution.
In a statement, the family noted that the night was about the “horrific death of Karen Sanders Lane, whose life was so savagely taken from her,” not Hunt’s life. In 1988, they claimed, Hunt showed her no mercy.
“This is also not about closure or victory. This night represents justice and the end of a nightmare that has coursed through our family for 37 years,” according to the family.
Steve Marshall, the attorney general of Alabama, referred to the execution as “a long-overdue moment of justice.”
Marshall remarked, “Gregory Hunt spent more time on death row than Karen spent alive. Karen was a young woman whose life was stolen in the most brutal and dehumanizing way imaginable.”
Hunt was one of the death row inmates in Alabama with the longest sentence. Last month, he told that he tried to assist other prisoners and that he was able to get “free of my poisons and demons” by discovering religion while incarcerated. Since 1998, he has been the leader of a weekly Bible study, he claimed.
“Just trying to be a light in a dark place, trying to tell people if I can change, they can too … become people of love instead of hate,” he stated.
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About three hours prior to the execution, Hunt’s appeal for a stay was refused by the U.S. Supreme Court. The Alabama attorney general’s office deemed Hunt’s argument that prosecutors had misled jurors about the evidence of sexual assault to be without merit.
Hunter refused to eat dinner. According to prison officials, he had a lunch tray on the day of his execution that contained fruit punch, carrots, black-eyed peas, and bologna.
Hunt’s coworker and opponent of the death penalty, the Rev. Jeff Hood, expressed regret over his execution.
Alabama was the first state to use nitrogen gas for an execution last year. Six executions have already taken place using this technique, five in Alabama and one in Louisiana.
Prior to Alabama creating protocols for the process, Hunt chose nitrogen over lethal injection or the electric chair.
Hunt’s execution was one of two that took place across the nation on Tuesday. Carmen Gayheart, a 23-year-old nursing student and mother of two young children, was killed in Lake City, Florida, in April 1994 by Anthony Wainwright, 54, who was executed by lethal injection.
