Stay of execution sought for Alabama death row inmate
By DESIREE HUNTER, Associated Press Writer
MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — Attorneys for Alabama death row inmate Darrell Grayson filed a motion Monday asking to stay his execution based on their concerns that the state's method of lethal injection causes"excruciatingpain.Lawyers for another death row inmate, Aaron Jones, also filed a motion Monday with the U.S. Supreme Court asking to stay his execution, scheduled for Thursday, at least until Grayson's challenge to lethal injection is heard.
Grayson, who was convicted in the 1980 rape and killing of an elderly woman in her Montevallo home, is one of a half-dozen inmates who have filed lethal injection challenges in the Montgomery federal court.
He is scheduled to be executed on July 26. But U.S. District Judge Keith Watkins, who was asked to stay the execution in the latest filing, has indicated a June 26 hearing on the lethal injection challenge is possible and has given attorneys a timetable to sumbit briefs.
The constitutionality of Alabama's method of execution by lethal injection has not been decided by the courts.
"The issue of a stay doesn't really come up until after he's had the trial," Stephen Bright, one of Grayson's attorneys, said Monday. "If we prove at the trial that the method of execution in Alabama causes excruciating pain, then the execution will almost certainly be stayed."
Attorneys for Jones, who is scheduled to be executed Thursday for the 1978 slayings of a Blount County couple, turned to the Supreme Court on Monday after the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta denied a similar stay request from Jones on Friday. The appeals court, noting the murders occurred more than 28 years ago, said in part that "the surviving victims have waited long enough for some closure to these heinous crimes."
The State's attorneys had argued that the 54-year-old Jones, who is one of the longest-serving death row inmates in Alabama, waited too long to challenge the constitutionality of lethal injection.
Clay Crenshaw, who handles capital appeals for the Alabama attorney general's office, said the state has until May 14 to respond to Grayson's stay request and will argue that the filing was "unreasonably delayed."
"The normal appeals for Grayson ended five years ago," he said. "In addition, Grayson has for the last four years litigated a request for DNA testing of several items. Now he's asking for what amounts to a fifth round of appeals."
Grayson was 19 when he and co-defendant Victor Kennedy beat and suffocated 86-year-old Annie Laura Orr, whose home was ransacked and burglarized. The two admitted they repeatedly raped the victim, and prosecutors used their statements as aggravating circumstances to get the death penalty. Kennedy was executed in 1999.
Bright, who is with the Atlanta-based Southern Center for Human Rights, said unlike Jones' case, the month between the tentative trial date and scheduled execution is enough time for his client's case to be heard.
Monday's filing isn't a delay tactic, rather a move to make sure the execution is constitutional and doesn't cause cruel and unusual punishment, he said.
http://www.dailyreportonline.com/Editorial/News/new_singleEdit.asp?individual_SQL=5%2F1%2F2007%4013052_Public_.htm 
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