Three executions in a single day in the United States

Three death row prisoners were executed in the United States on the same day. It had not happened for sixteen years. The news is reported by Fox News.

In the morning Carlos Cuesta-Rodriguez was executed by lethal injection in Oklahoma for the murder of his partner Olimpia Fisher. About thirty minutes later the sentence against Anthony Darrell Hines was carried out in Tennessee for the murder of Catherine Jean Jenkins, a motel cleaner. A few hours after that Jeremy Williams was executed in Alabama for the rape and murder of Kamarie Holland, a five-year-old girl.

The three executions took place in three different states, each with its own procedure and timetable. The coincidence is therefore not the result of a single decision but the consequence of an overall increase in the pace at which sentences are carried out.

Since Donald Trump's return to the White House, executions in the United States have risen markedly. Last year the number of people put to death was more than four times higher than in 2021.

The American president has long been an open supporter of capital punishment, which he has repeatedly described as an essential instrument for deterring and punishing those who commit the most heinous crimes and acts of lethal violence against American citizens.

In the United States jurisdiction over the matter remains primarily with the states: some have abolished the death penalty, others retain it but have not carried out an execution for years, and others have resumed. It is this fragmented geography, more than any federal decision, that determines the number of executions in a given year.