Three US executions set to take place on the same day for the first time in 16 years
Warning: This article contains discussion of sexual assault which some readers may find distressing.
For only the second time in US history, three executions are set to take place on the same day, as one inmate has been waiting on death row for 40 years.
After returning to the White House last year, Trump signed an executive order aimed at expanding the use of the federal death penalty, with several states also having accelerated their use.
And next week on August 13, three death row inmates are scheduled to be put to death on the same day - a situation that has occurred only once before in US history - January 7, 2010.
Advert
Jeremy Williams, 41, Carlos Cuesta-Rodriguez, 70, and Anthony Darrell Dugard Hines, 66, will be put to death in different states via lethal injection, which was first introduced as a form of capital punishment in America in 1977.
Williams, who is being put to death in Alabama, was previously convicted of the rape and murder of a five-year-old girl in Russell County in 2021.
He pleaded guilty to four counts of capital murder, and prosecutors alleged that he sexually assaulted and strangled the child after abducting her.
Cuesta-Rodriguez is scheduled to receive the lethal injection in Oklahoma, after the 2003 murder of his wife, Olimpia Fisher.
Her daughter, Katya Wallace, said at a clemency hearing for Cuesta-Rodriguez in July: "He was an extremely over-obsessive, selfish, calculated person.
"Every trigger, every lost moment, every piece of joy that has turned into pain, was his deliberate choice. My family has been crushed by this."
Fisher was sleeping in an spare bedroom when her killer awoke from a drunken sleep and confronted her about his paranoid suspicious she was cheating on him. A fight ensued, in which he allegedly shot her in the right eye.
During the hearing, the 70-year-old shocked the Oklahoma Board of Parole and Pardon when he reportedly said: "You must believe that I deserve to suffer. And you're right.
"It's time for me to pay for what I did."
Hines is the third inmate to be put to death next week, this time in Tennessee.
His lethal sentencing comes after the 1985 murder of motel housekeeper Katherine Jenkins.
Prosecutors found that the 66-year-old had fatally stabbed 54-year-old Jenkins multiple times while robbing the premises, and stole approximately $100 from her during the fatal attack.
Evidence presented in court, including the results of a post-mortem examination, highlighted that the victim had also allegedly been sexually assaulted during the robbery, which the judge cited as further reasoning behind his death sentence.
If you've been affected by any of the issues in this article, you can contact The National Sexual Assault Hotline on 800.656.HOPE (4673), available 24/7. Or you can chat online via online.rainn.org
Mia Williams