US Executed Three Inmates in One Day for First Time in 16 Years

The United States carried out three consecutive executions in a single day for the first time in 16 years.

The Oklahoma Department of Corrections executed 70-year-old Carlos Cuesta-Rodriguez, who was sentenced to death for murdering his girlfriend, via lethal injection on the morning of the 13th local time, the Associated Press reported.

With this execution, Cuesta-Rodriguez became the third person put to death in Oklahoma this year and the 20th inmate executed during the eight-year term of Republican Governor Kevin Stitt.

He had been serving a death sentence after being convicted of fatally shooting his girlfriend in 2003 when she tried to break up with him.

His legal team requested a commutation to life imprisonment at a pardon and parole board hearing last month, citing his troubled childhood in Cuba, brain damage, post-traumatic stress disorder, and depression, but the request was denied.

In Tennessee, 66-year-old Anthony Darrell Hines, who was sentenced to death for the fatal stabbing of a motel cleaner in 1985, was also executed that morning using the same method.

Hines challenged the governor and the courts, arguing that having suffered two strokes, he had narrowed blood vessels and muscle atrophy, making the execution by injection likely to fail, but his appeal was dismissed.

Alabama is scheduled to execute 42-year-old Jeremy Williams, who was convicted of sexually assaulting and murdering a 5-year-old child in 2021.

Williams committed the crime after paying the victim's mother 2,500 dollars and even filmed the act on video.

He waived his appeals and requested that his death sentence be carried out promptly.

Although Alabama's use of nitrogen gas for executions was ruled unconstitutional last June, today's execution is expected to proceed unaffected as it utilizes lethal injection.

The victim's mother pleaded guilty to child sex trafficking and is serving a 20-year prison sentence.

If Alabama's execution proceeds as planned, it will mark the first time three executions have taken place in a single day in approximately 16 years, since January 7, 2010.

In 2018, three executions were also scheduled for a single day, but at the time, two were delayed due to a stay of execution and technical issues, leaving only one carried out.

Executions were carried out in 11 U.S. states last year, and with today's scheduled executions, the number of states that have carried out executions this year will reach six.

(Photo: AP, Yonhap News)
※ Please note: This article was translated by AI and may contain errors.