Three states are reportedly preparing to carry out executions Thursday in a rare same-day series involving three convicted killers, including a man who confessed to the rape and murder of a 5-year-old girl.
Alabama, Oklahoma and Tennessee are scheduled to execute three men by lethal injection, marking the first time in more than a decade that three executions have been planned in the United States on the same day. The country has not executed three men on a single day since Jan. 7, 2010, according to the Associated Press.
In Alabama, 42-year-old Jeremy Williams is scheduled to be executed Thursday evening for the 2021 rape and murder of 5-year-old Kamarie Holland.
The girl’s disappearance triggered a search after she was reported missing on Dec. 13, 2021. Phone records later showed that Williams and Kamarie’s mother, Kristy Siple, had conspired the night before.
Siple sold her daughter to Williams for $2,500 in exchange for one hour of oral sex. Authorities later discovered Kamarie’s strangled body dumped outside an abandoned home.
A jury convicted Williams on all capital murder charges, and a judge sentenced him to death. Williams subsequently waived his appeals, allowing Republican Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey to move up the execution date. Siple is serving 20 years in prison on human sex trafficking charges.
“This guy brought a tremendous amount of pain and hurt to several, several little girls, and he don’t deserve to breathe the air that you and I breathe,” Sheriff Heath Taylor said.
Meanwhile, Tennessee is scheduled to execute Anthony Darrell Hines, 66, at a maximum-security prison in Nashville for the 1985 murder of motel maid Catherine Jean Jenkins.
A jury convicted Hines of first-degree felony murder after Jenkins was discovered naked and wrapped in a sheet inside a motel room. Hines stabbed her multiple times in the chest and other parts of her body.
Republican Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee declined to intervene this week after reviewing Hines’ clemency request.
“After deliberate consideration of Anthony Darrell Hines’ request for clemency, and after a thorough review of the case, I am upholding the sentence of the State of Tennessee and do not plan to intervene,” Lee said.
Oklahoma is also preparing to execute Carlos Cuesta-Rodriguez, 70, for murdering his longtime girlfriend, Olimpia Fisher, more than two decades ago.
Cuesta-Rodriguez shot Fisher in the eye in 2003 at their Oklahoma City home in what police described as a “gruesome and chaotic” scene. Oklahoma’s Pardon and Parole Board voted 3-1 against clemency in July, something Cuesta-Rodriguez told members he did not want.
“Olimpia’s family has endured heartbreak for 23 years,” Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond said. “Justice will be served when the death penalty is carried out.”
The executions come after Florida became the first state in nearly a decade to conduct two executions on the same day in July.
In April, President Donald Trump’s Justice Department also directed the Bureau of Prisons to bring back the firing squad and lethal injection as methods for carrying out federal executions.
