A man killed by a controversial new execution method has some haunting final movements beforehand.
The death row inmate at a south Alabama prison was pronounced dead at 6:26pm yesterday (10 June).
One of four executions scheduled this week in the US, Gregory Hunt gave no final words as he was strapped to a gurney with a blue-rimmed mask covering his face.
His time in prison came after he was convicted of killing 32-year-old Karen Lane in 1988. The pair had dated for about a month before he is said to have become enraged with jealousy and broke into her apartment.
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Hunt sexually abused and beat Lane to death, inflicting 60 injuries on her body including 20 to her head, according to prosecutors.
A jury found Hunt guilty of capital murder during sexual abuse and burglary in 1990 and the jurors recommended a death sentence by an 11-1.
Born in 1960, he was one of the longest-serving inmates on Alabama’s death row. Hunt selected nitrogen gas as his execution method, over lethal injection or the electric chair. Alabama because the first state to use this last year, having now been used in six executions in the states.
Before the gas began flowing, the man appeared to give a thumbs-up sign and a peace sign with his fingers.
While the exact moment it did start remains unclear, however, it’s reported that Hunt briefly shook, gasped and raised his head off the gurney. It’s then said he let out a moan at about 5:59pm, with his feet raising (via NBC News).
With long pauses in between them, he made a series of around four gasping breaths before making no final movements after 6:05pm.
“Tonight, the state carried out the lawfully imposed punishment for Gregory Hunt who is undeniably guilty,” Governor Kay Ivey said.
Last month, Hunt told the Associated Press that finding religion while imprisoned had helped him to be ‘free of my poisons and demons’.
Explaining he was trying to help his fellow inmates, he added: “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.”
The man acted as his own attorney in a filing to the US Supreme Court in a bid to halt the execution as he argued that prosecutors during his trial misled jurors about the evidence of sexual abuse.
The Alabama attorney general’s office called the claim meritless.
Jess Battison