We have sad news regarding this Urgent Action. On Thursday, November 21, 2024, the state of Alabama carried out the execution of Carey Grayson, making it the sixth execution carried out by Alabama in 2024. Read Amnesty International USA’s press release here.
On Thursday, November 21, 2024, the state of Alabama has scheduled Carey Grayson to be executed.
In 1996, he became the last of four young males to be convicted of a 1994 murder. At the four separate trials, the prosecutor used mutually incompatible theories, claiming each defendant was the most culpable. In 2004, Alabama told the U.S. Supreme Court that Carey Grayson was not the most culpable.
Carey Grayson’s death sentence is the sole to survive upon an appeal. He was 19-years-old at the time of the crime, emerging from a childhood marked by abuse, neglect and bipolar disorder.
We urge Alabama’s Governor Kay Ivey to commute his sentence.
This would be Alabama’s sixth execution in 2024. This would be its third execution by nitrogen gas hypoxia, all conducted in 2024. Amnesty International opposes the death penalty in all cases unconditionally.
We’re calling for the state of Alabama to stop the execution and grant clemency to Carey Grayson.
Email your message to the Governor by using her office’s web contact form. This is the primary way to take action on this case through November 21, 2024. You can also contact the Governor’s office via social media. Please share this action via your social networks.
Dear Governor,
I am writing to urge you to grant clemency to Carey Grayson, who is scheduled to be executed in Alabama on November 21, 2024. I do not seek in any way to downplay violent crime or its devastating consequences.
Carey Grayson, now 50, was one of four young defendants convicted of a February 1994 murder. He was 19 at the time of the crime and the last of the four to be prosecuted. The prosecutor argued that he was the “leader of the pack”, despite having made the same assertion in each of the three previous trials of his younger co-defendants. This use of inconsistent claims against the four co-defendants flouted the UN Guidelines on the Role of Prosecutors, and Carey Grayson’s right to mount an effective defense had been undermined by his lawyers having been left unaware of this tactic being employed in the first three trials.
Carey Grayson struggled with bipolar disorder as a child and teenager, as did others in his family, and learned to self-medicate with drugs and alcohol to control his symptoms. After his mother was killed when he was 11, he lived with his abusive father, who evicted him from the house when he was 15. His later teenage years were marked by neglect, homelessness, and hunger, as well as the symptoms and consequences of his mental disability.
I appeal to you to grant clemency to Carey Grayson and to commute his death sentence.
Yours sincerely,
[YOUR NAME]
Additional Ways to Act AND RESOURCES
Sign the petition urging President Biden to commute the death sentence of Billie Allen and all those on federal and military death row
Learn more about the death penalty
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