Oklahoma and Tennessee each carried out an execution on Thursday, with a third scheduled in Alabama, in what would be the first time in more than 15 years that three judicial killings occurred in the US on a single day.
Carlos Cuesta-Rodriguez, 70, was pronounced dead at 10.13am at the Oklahoma state penitentiary in McAlester. He was sentenced to death for the 2003 murder of his common-law wife, Olimpia Fisher. His appeals for mercy, citing remorse and lifelong mental illness, were unsuccessful.
Family statement and Tennessee execution
Cuesta-Rodriguez’s family issued a statement describing his life as one of “extraordinary beauty and tenderness within the darkest of conditions.” They said: “Through small, unglamorous, consistent acts of kindness, he expressed his humanity year after year.” The statement added that he was “remorseful every single day” and defined by “decades of living humbly, gently, and with unwavering love and devotion to his family and to inmates far worse off than himself.”
One hour later, Darrell Hines, 66, was executed in Tennessee for the 1985 murder of Catherine Jean Jackson Jenkins, a motel maid and mother of four. His lawyers had sought a postponement after Tennessee’s previous execution attempt in May, of Tony Carruthers, failed following a prolonged search for a vein.
Lawyer’s condemnation and third execution
Katherine Dix, Hines’s attorney, called his death a “murder” and said she grieved “the violence the state of Tennessee inflicted on us all today,” including on Hines’s son, who met him for the first time four days before and watched him die. Dix added: “The leaders of this state repeatedly invoke the sanctity of life, but today the state put to death a man who was blind and paralyzed on his left side, could not walk, and was in constant pain. They lifted his body on to a gurney and wheeled him to the death chamber. May God have mercy on us all.”
The third scheduled execution in Alabama is of Jeremy Williams, 42, who pleaded guilty to raping and murdering a five-year-old girl, Kamarie Holland, in Georgia in 2021. Williams declined to appeal, expediting his execution.
Renewed death penalty activity
Should all three executions proceed, it will mark the first triple execution day in the US in over 15 years. The scheduling coincidence reflects renewed energy among death penalty states. Last year, 47 executions were carried out in the US, a sharp rise from 25 the previous year, with Florida conducting 19 under Governor Ron DeSantis.
All three executions were scheduled by lethal injection, the standard method since the early 1980s. Alabama had largely switched to nitrogen gas, but a federal judge halted that method in June as unconstitutional. The executions underscore the ongoing debate over capital punishment in the US.
