Three states set same-day executions by lethal injection

Tennessee, Alabama and Oklahoma are set to carry out lethal injections Thursday in a rare same-day convergence of executions in the United States, a schedule that would mark the first time since 2010 that three people have been put to death on the same day.

The men facing execution were sentenced to death in separate murder cases: Anthony Darrell Hines in Tennessee, Jeremy Williams in Alabama and Carlos Cuesta-Rodriguez in Oklahoma. The last time three executions were carried out on the same day was Jan. 7, 2010, when Louisiana, Ohio and Texas put inmates to death. Three executions were also scheduled on the same day in 2018, but only one went forward after a Texas man received a reprieve and Alabama prison officials had problems with an IV line.

Eleven states carried out executions in 2025. If the Tennessee and Alabama executions proceed, six states will have had executions in 2026. Florida executed two men on the same day in July and has put 31 prisoners to death since the start of 2025.

In Tennessee, Hines, 66, is scheduled to die for the 1985 killing of Catherine Jean Jenkins, a 54-year-old motel maid in Kingston Springs. Hines stabbed Jenkins to death while she was working. He was sentenced to death in 1986, won an appeal for a new sentencing hearing and was again sentenced to death in 1989.

His execution date comes three months after Tennessee halted the attempted lethal injection of Tony Carruthers because of trouble inserting an IV. Carruthers’ lawyer said the IV team established a primary line quickly but then spent more than an hour trying to insert a backup line, attempting sites in his arm, hand and foot before trying a central line. Gov. Bill Lee called off that execution and granted Carruthers a one-year reprieve.

Hines unsuccessfully appealed to the governor and the courts, arguing that the doctor who oversaw the May attempt was unqualified and likely to mishandle his execution. He also said his thinness and muscular atrophy after two strokes could create IV problems. The state has declined to say whether the same doctor will oversee Hines’ execution. The Tennessee Supreme Court ruled that Hines had not proved the doctor was unqualified and suggested the earlier problems were an isolated mishap.

Alabama is scheduled to execute Williams, 42, for the 2021 rape and murder of 5-year-old Kamarie Holland of Georgia. Williams pleaded guilty, declined to appeal and asked for his death sentence to be carried out. Prosecutors said he raped and strangled the girl after offering her mother $2,500 for the child to perform a sex act. They said he filmed the attack and kept the child’s body to continue abusing her.

“To see on video what he did to this baby, what a grown man could do to a child, it’s shocking, it’s horrible, it’s disgusting,” Russell County District Attorney Richard Chancey said. “It’s just a level of evil.”

Kamarie’s father, Corey Holland, described his daughter as an exuberant child who loved princesses and made people laugh. “She loved playing dress-up, all her little Halloween costumes and her princess stuff I got her. She liked anything girly,” he said. Her mother is serving a 20-year prison sentence after pleading guilty to sex trafficking.

In Oklahoma, Cuesta-Rodriguez, 70, is set to be executed at the state penitentiary in McAlester for killing his girlfriend, Olimpia Fisher, in 2003. Fisher, 43, planned to leave him when he shot her in one eye, then waited about eight minutes as she screamed for help before firing the fatal shot into her other eye, prosecutors said.

“He made her suffer because she dared to live beyond his control,” Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond told the state Pardon and Parole Board on July 14. The board voted 3-1 last month against recommending clemency. Cuesta-Rodriguez’s attorneys had asked that he serve life in prison, citing a difficult childhood in Cuba and saying he suffered from brain damage, post-traumatic stress disorder and major depression with psychotic episodes.

Al Jazeera reported that the executions come as support for the death penalty has declined in the U.S., citing a Gallup poll that found 52% of Americans consider capital punishment morally acceptable, the lowest level since the 1970s.