An Alabama inmate convicted of murdering a woman after breaking into her apartment as she slept was put to death Thursday evening in the nation’s fourth execution using nitrogen gas.
Demetrius Frazier, 52, was pronounced dead at 6:36 p.m. CST at a south Alabama prison for his murder conviction in the 1991 rape and killing of 41-year-old Pauline Brown. It was the first execution in Alabama this year and the third in the U.S. in 2025, following a lethal injection Wednesday in Texas and another last Friday in South Carolina.
“First of all I want to apologize to the family and friends of Pauline Brown. What happened to Pauline Brown should have never happened,” Frazier said. He also criticized Michigan Gov. Gretchen Witmer for what he said was her failure to step in following appeals for him to be returned to serve out a previous life sentence in her state.
“I love everybody on death row. Detroit Strong,” he said.
Recently, Frazier’s mother and death penalty opponents had appealed to Whitmer to take Frazier back to Michigan to complete his life sentence for the murder of a teenage girl before he was turned over years ago to Alabama authorities. Michigan does not have the death penalty.
Michigan attorney general’s office wrote in a January court filing that the state did not want Frazier back. It was in 1992 while in custody in Michigan that Frazier confessed to killing Brown, police had said.
Michigan’s Gov. Whitmer told The Detroit News prior to the execution that her predecessor in office, Rick Snyder, “unfortunately” agreed to send Frazier to Alabama where it was in the hands of officials there.
“It’s a really tough situation,” she told the media outlet before the execution was carried out. “I understand the pleas and concerns. Michigan is not a death penalty state.”
Prosecutors said that on Nov. 27, 1991, Frazier, then 19, broke into Brown’s apartment in Birmingham while she was asleep. Prosecutors said he demanded money and raped Brown at gunpoint after she gave him $80 from her purse. He then shot her in the head, they said, adding he returned later to have a snack and look for money.
Frazier was sentenced to life in prison in Michigan for the 1992 murder of Crystal Kendrick, 14. Then in 1996, an Alabama jury convicted him of murdering Brown and recommended by a vote of 10-2 that he receive a death sentence. Frazier remained in Michigan custody until 2011 when the then-governors of the two states agreed to move him to Alabama’s death row.
Alabama became the first state to carry out executions with nitrogen gas when three inmates were put to death last year using the method. It involves placing a respirator gas mask over the person’s face to replace breathable air with pure nitrogen gas, causing death by lack of oxygen.
The execution began at about 6:10 p.m after a corrections officer did a final check of the respirator mask used to administer the nitrogen gas. Frazier moved his outstretched hands in a circular movement for the first minute or so before beginning to grimace and quiver on the gurney. At 6:13 p.m. he raised both legs several inches of the gurney
He appeared to take a few gasping breaths. Then, his breathing slowed to a a series of sporadic breaths. He had no visible movement by 6:21 p.m. The curtains closed to the execution chamber at 6:29 p.m.
Alabama Corrections Commissioner John Hamm said the gas flowed for about 18 minutes. He said instruments indicated that Frazier no longer had a heart beat 13 minutes after the gas began flowing.
Hamm said that he believed that Frazier lost consciousness quickly, noting that the swirling motion of the hands had stopped. The commissioner said he believed the other movements, such as the raising of the legs and the periodic breaths were involuntary movements.
A federal judge last week rejected a request to block Frazier’s execution. His attorneys had argued the new method does not work as quickly as the state promised. Media witnesses, including The Associated Press, described how those put to death with the method shook on the gurney at the start of their executions.
The judge, however, ruled that the descriptions of the executions did not support a finding that any of the men “experienced severe psychological pain or distress over and above what is inherent in any execution.”
Some of Brown’s family members witnessed the execution but opted not to make a statement to the media
“In Alabama, we enforce the law. You don’t come to our state and mess with our citizens and get away with it. Rapists and murderers are not welcome on our streets, and tonight, justice was carried out for Pauline Brown and her loved ones,” Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey said in a statement.
