Three states plan to execute inmates Thursday, in what would be the first time in more than a decade that three people on death row are killed on the same day.
The executions are set to be carried out by lethal injection in Alabama, Oklahoma and Tennessee.
Nationally, states are on track to execute far fewer people in 2026 than in previous years. Public support for capital punishment is at its lowest level in decades, according to Gallup polls, even as the Trump administration has called the death penalty an “essential tool for deterring and punishing” horrific crimes.
Each of the three men scheduled to die Thursday was convicted of murder. In Tennessee, Anthony Darrell Hines, 66, was convicted of the 1985 stabbing and murder of a motel maid. In Oklahoma, Carlos Cuesta-Rodriguez, 70, was convicted of fatally shooting his then-girlfriend in 2003. In Alabama, Jeremy Williams, 42, pleaded guilty to the sexual assault and murder of a 5-year-old girl in 2021.
The planned execution in Tennessee comes after officials called off the scheduled lethal injection in May of Tony Carruthers, a man convicted of three 1993 murders, when medical staff were unable to find a vein. Mr. Carruthers received a yearlong reprieve from Gov. Bill Lee.
Maria DeLiberato, a lawyer for Mr. Carruthers who witnessed the series of failed attempts to insert a line for the lethal drug, later wrote in The New York Times that it was an agonizing experience that lasted more than an hour.
Mr. Hines’s lawyers have asserted that the state’s lethal injection procedure could violate the U.S. Constitution’s prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment. In one court filing, the state of Tennessee responded that “the U.S. and Tennessee Constitutions do not demand avoidance of all pain in executions.”
Mr. Hines was found guilty in 1986 of the stabbing death of Catherine Jenkins at the Kingston Springs motel where she had worked as a maid. He has maintained his innocence and unsuccessfully fought for a new trial in Tennessee.
Tennessee restarted executions in 2025 after a pause begun in 2022 when it admitted that its lethal injection drugs had not been properly tested. Mr. Hines is part of a lawsuit challenging the new injection procedure.
Lawyers for Mr. Hines have also criticized state officials for not disclosing more information about the failed execution of Mr. Carruthers. The state also won’t disclose whether the doctor who was unable to administer the lethal drugs to Mr. Carruthers would be tending to Mr. Hines.
Tennessee officials say that state procedure bars the identification of any medical staff involved in an execution.
As of Wednesday evening, the U.S. Supreme Court had not responded to a request from Mr. Hines’s lawyers to intervene.
Only six states have plans to carry out capital punishment this year. Florida remains by far the most aggressive in its use of the death penalty, accounting for 12 of the 19 executions carried out so far this year.
Oklahoma has executed two people this year. Mr. Cuesta-Rodriguez, the inmate scheduled to be executed there, said at a recent hearing that he did not want clemency, according to local reports. Instead, he said he wanted to apologize to the surviving children of Olimpia Fisher, 43, his then-girlfriend. After a string of domestic assaults, he shot and killed her during a confrontation.
In Alabama, Mr. Williams will be the state’s first person executed this year after the Supreme Court issued a rare decision in June blocking the scheduled execution of another inmate by nitrogen gas. Mr. Williams dropped an appeal and effectively requested that the death penalty be carried out.
Ann E. Marimow contributed reporting from Washington.
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