An inmate in Alabama found guilty of killing a woman in her home whilst she slept was executed on Thursday evening, marking the fourth time nitrogen gas was used for capital punishment in the United States.
Demetrius Frazier, aged 52, was declared dead at 6:36pm CST in a south Alabama correctional facility for the 1991 murder and rape of Pauline Brown, 41.
This was Alabama’s first execution this year and the third in the US in 2025, following executions in Texas and South Carolina.
“First of all I want to apologise to the family and friends of Pauline Brown. What happened to Pauline Brown should have never happened,” Frazier had said earlier. He also expressed criticism towards Michigan governor Gretchen Witmer regarding her inaction on appeals for his return to serve his previous life sentence in Michigan.
“I love everybody on death row. Detroit Strong,” he said.
His mother and anti-death penalty activists had requested governor Whitmer to allow Frazier to return to Michigan to complete his life sentence for a teenage girl’s murder before his transfer to Alabama. Michigan does not implement capital punishment.
The Michigan attorney general’s office stated in January that the state did not want Frazier back. While in Michigan custody in 1992, Frazier admitted to Brown’s murder, according to police reports.
Prior to the execution, governor Whitmer told The Detroit News that her predecessor, Rick Snyder, “unfortunately” agreed to transfer Frazier to Alabama, where local authorities took control.
“It’s a really tough situation,” she told the media outlet before the execution. “I understand the pleas and concerns. Michigan is not a death penalty state.”
On November 27, 1991, prosecutors stated that Frazier, then 19, broke into Brown’s Birmingham flat while she slept. They said he demanded money and sexually assaulted Brown at gunpoint after receiving $80. He then fatally shot her and later returned to eat and search for more money.
Frazier received a life sentence in Michigan for killing Crystal Kendrick, 14, in 1992.
In 1996, an Alabama jury found him guilty of Brown’s murder with a 10-2 vote for the death penalty. He remained in Michigan until 2011, when both states’ governors agreed to his transfer to Alabama’s death row.
Alabama became the first state to carry out nitrogen gas executions, implementing three in the previous year. The procedure involves administering pure nitrogen through a respiratory mask, causing death by oxygen deprivation.
The execution commenced at 6:10pm after a final mask check. Frazier moved his hands circularly initially, then showed signs of distress. At 6:13pm, he lifted his legs off the gurney.
He appeared to gasp before his breathing slowed to intermittent breaths. Movement ceased by 6:21pm The chamber curtains closed at 6:29pm.
Commissioner John Hamm reported nitrogen flow lasted approximately 18 minutes, with monitors indicating no heartbeat 13 minutes after administration began.
A federal judge recently declined to stop Frazier’s execution despite his lawyers arguing about the method’s speed. Media witnesses, including The Associated Press, documented convulsions in previous nitrogen executions.
The judge concluded that execution accounts did not indicate “severe psychological pain or distress” beyond what is inherent in executions.
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