An Alabama Death Row inmate, who is set to die next month by nitrogen gas, is arguing that he shouldn’t be in Alabama’s custody at all.
Demetrius Terrence Frazier, 52, is set to die sometime within a 30-hour-period starting at midnight on Thursday, Feb. 6 and ending at 6 a.m. on Feb. 7. Frazier is set to die by inhaling pure nitrogen gas.
But on Thursday afternoon, Frazier’s attorneys with the Federal Public Defenders filed a lawsuit saying Frazier—who admitted to the slaying of Pauline Brown in Jefferson County over 30 years ago—shouldn’t be in the state’s prison system.
Frazier was arrested in Michigan in 1992, when he was 19 years old. Shortly after his arrest, he admitted to killing Brown in 1991.
Frazier was convicted in Michigan for a string of crimes. In 1995, Michigan authorities brought Frazier to Alabama, where he was tried, found guilty and sentenced to death. The Michigan authorities then brought him back north.
Frazier remained locked up in Michigan’s penal system, serving three life sentences for 1993 convictions of murder, criminal sexual conduct, and robbery in the state. But in 2011, then-Govs. Robert Bentley of Alabama and Rick Snyder of Michigan created an executive agreement to transfer Frazier to Alabama, according to documents signed by the governors and attached to the new lawsuit.
No explanation was provided in the documents as to why the transfer was initiated.
Michigan does not have the death penalty, and its state constitution banned it in 1963.
Now Frazier’s attorneys are arguing that executive agreement was unlawful and void, and asking the inmate to be sent back to Michigan.
One of Frazier’s lawyers, Spencer Hahn, wrote in November to the current Michigan governor, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, arguing that Frazier is in the legal custody of the Michigan Department of Corrections and being executed by Alabama would violate the northern state’s constitution. Hahn asked the governor to do “everything in (her) power to ensure he is returned to the physical custody of MDOC.”
“You have a legal duty to preserve, protect, and defend the Michigan Constitution and Mr. Frazier requests you do so,” Hahn wrote.
Whitmer’s office had not responded to a request for comment from AL.com prior to publication of this story.
Whitmer, according to the lawsuit, responded to Hahn and said “she would not act on his request at that time.”
In the Thursday lawsuit, Frazier’s lawyers argued his “Michigan life sentences have not been commuted and he has not been pardoned.” And the northern state’s law says, according to Frazier’s lawyers, that an inmate like Frazier “shall not be eligible for custodial incarceration outside a state correctional facility or a county jail.”
The Michigan Department of Corrections lists Frazier as a prisoner on their online database, with his current status listed as prisoner and his location listed as Alabama.
According to an inmate classification summary from the Alabama Department of Corrections, Frazier is an inmate “borrowed from Michigan.”
Frazier also has a separate federal lawsuit being waged in the Middle District of Alabama over the Alabama’s nitrogen execution protocol. A judge has set a hearing for that case for Jan. 28.
