Overview
- Three condemned men were put to death by lethal injection in Oklahoma, Tennessee and Alabama on Thursday, with the three executions occurring within about eight hours.
- The prisoners were Carlos Cuesta-Rodriguez in Oklahoma, Anthony Darrell Hines in Tennessee, and Jeremy Williams in Alabama, each convicted of violent crimes including murder and, in Williams's case, child abduction and rape.
- Tennessee officials confirmed Anthony Hines died at 10:43 a.m. local time and reported his final words as “Tell my son I love him,” after a last-minute appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court was denied.
- The killings add to a recent rise in U.S. executions: 47 people were executed in 2025 and this year’s total rose to 22 with Thursday’s deaths, and several more execution dates remain scheduled, according to AP and the Death Penalty Information Center.
- Capital punishment is authorized in more than two dozen states but is applied unevenly across the country, public polling shows broad support for the penalty for murder while many Americans doubt its deterrent effect, and victims’ families and state corrections agencies remain central actors in the process.