{"id":220523,"date":"2026-08-14T03:32:15","date_gmt":"2026-08-14T03:32:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/oklahoma-and-tennessee-each-execute-one-man-in-two-of-three-us-executions-scheduled-on-same-day-the-guardian\/"},"modified":"2026-08-14T03:32:15","modified_gmt":"2026-08-14T03:32:15","slug":"oklahoma-and-tennessee-each-execute-one-man-in-two-of-three-us-executions-scheduled-on-same-day-the-guardian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/oklahoma-and-tennessee-each-execute-one-man-in-two-of-three-us-executions-scheduled-on-same-day-the-guardian\/","title":{"rendered":"Oklahoma and Tennessee each execute one man in two of three US executions scheduled on same day – The Guardian"},"content":{"rendered":"

Rare scheduling in Oklahoma, Tennessee and Alabama underlines the renewed appetite in US for state killings
Carlos Cuesta-Rodriguez was put to death by the state of Oklahoma<\/a>, in the first of three executions scheduled for Thursday in a rare triple procedure that underlines the renewed appetite in the US for state killings.
Just one hour later, Darrell Hines was put to death by the state of Tennessee<\/a>, and at 6pm local time in Alabama, that state executed Jeremy Williams.
Cuesta-Rodriguez, 70, was pronounced dead at 10.13am at the Oklahoma state penitentiary in McAlester. He was sentenced to death for murdering his common-law wife, Olimpia Fisher, in 2003. He had unsuccessfully appealed for mercy, saying he was remorseful and had struggled all his life from mental illness.
Cuesta-Rodriguez\u2019s family and friends issued a statement in the wake of his execution, calling his life one of \u201cextraordinary beauty and tenderness within the darkest of conditions\u201d.
\u201cThrough small, unglamorous, consistent acts of kindness, he expressed his humanity year after year,\u201d the statement read.
\u201cHe was a different man from the one who committed his horrible crime \u2013 remorseful every single day, burdened by the weight of what he had done \u2013 but defined by decades of living humbly, gently, and with unwavering love and devotion to his family and to inmates far worse off than himself. His legacy will not be measured by his worst moment, but by the countless moments after \u2013 the letters that never failed to arrive, the art he created from behind those walls, and the love and light he poured out consistently and unconditionally, proving that even from a place of such darkness, one person\u2019s kindness and redemption can still ripple into the world.\u201d
Hines, 66, was sentenced to death for the 1985 murder<\/a> of Catherine Jean Jackson Jenkins, a motel maid and mother of four. His lawyers had tried to postpone his execution on grounds that Tennessee\u2019s previous effort to kill a prisoner, Tony Carruthers<\/a>, in May had failed after a gruesome and prolonged search for a vein.
Katherine Dix, attorney for Hines, called his death a \u201cmurder\u201d and said she grieved \u201cthe violence the state of Tennessee inflicted on us all today\u201d, including on the prisoner\u2019s son who met him for the first time only four days ago and watched him die.
Dix added: \u201cThe 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.\u201d
The third execution of the day was of Williams, 42, who raped and murdered a five-year-old girl in Georgia in 2021. He pleaded guilty to killing Kamarie Holland and instructed his lawyers not to object to anything prosecutors did during trial, waived sentencing by a jury and did not present any mitigating evidence typically provided during a capital sentencing. He declined to appeal, bringing on his execution at a much faster pace than most death row occupants.
During Williams\u2019s last 24 hours of life, his wife, mother, stepmother, brother and father all visited him, according to the Alabama<\/a> department of corrections, and he spoke on the phone with his grandmother and aunt.
\u201cI want to thank God for forgiving me for my sins so I can meet him in peace,\u201d Williams said in his final words, according to the Associated Press. The agency reported that Williams rocked his head back-and-forth and smiled and appeared to sing or speak before slowing and becoming still on the gurney.
This is the first time in more than 15 years that there have been three judicial killings in the US on a single day. The one-day surge in death chamber activity was a scheduling coincidence, but it is also a sign of renewed energy among death penalty states.
Last year 47 executions<\/a> were carried out in the US, a dramatic increase on the previous year\u2019s 25. Much of the increase was generated by one state alone, Florida, which conducted 19 killings under its Republican governor, Ron DeSantis.
All three scheduled executions were due to take place by lethal injection, the procedure that has been the norm in the US since the early 1980s. Alabama had largely switched to a new experimental method, nitrogen gas, but that was halted by a federal judge in June on grounds that it was unconstitutional.<\/p>\n

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Rare scheduling in Oklahoma, Tennessee and Alabama underlines the renewed appetite in US for state killingsCarlos Cuesta-Rodriguez was put to death by the state of Oklahoma, in the first of three executions scheduled for Thursday in a rare triple procedure that underlines the renewed appetite in the US for state killings.Just one hour later, Darrell […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":220524,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-220523","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-us","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/220523","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=220523"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/220523\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/220524"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=220523"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=220523"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=220523"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}