Updated Aug. 13, 2026, 9:48 p.m. ET
This story contains material about domestic abuse. If you or someone you love is experiencing domestic violence or an abusive relationship, call the National Domestic Abuse Hotline at 1-800-799-SAFE (1-800-799-7233) or visit www.thehotline.org. Callers can remain anonymous.
Three states each executed death row inmates on Thursday, Aug. 13, marking the first triple execution in the nation in 16 years.
Oklahoma executed Carlos Cuesta-Rodriguez by lethal injection for the 2003 murder of his common-law wife, and Tennessee put Anthony Hines to death, also by lethal injection, for the 1985 murder of a mother of four. They were pronounced dead 30 minutes apart at 10:13 a.m. and 10:43 CT, respectively. Later in the day, Alabama executed Jeremy Williams by lethal injection for the 2021 rape and murder of a 5-year-old girl. He was pronounced dead at 6:16 p.m. CT.
The last time three states carried out executions on the same day was in 2010, according to a USA TODAY analysis of data kept by the nonprofit Death Penalty Information Center. That year the executions were in Ohio, Texas and Louisiana.
“It’s very unusual,” Robin Maher, the center’s executive director, said about triple executions.
Though sometimes two executions are held on the same day in the U.S., most of the time it’s one. Death penalty observers say that double or triple executions are purely coincidental timing.
Like the majority of inmates on death row, the three men executed on Thursday all killed women or girls. Of 94 executions held since 2024 − including Thursday’s − 64% of the victims involved were women and girls, according to a USA TODAY analysis.
So far this year, five states have now executed 22 death row inmates and at least another dozen executions are expected. Last year, 47 inmates were executed in the U.S., more than any other year since 2009.
Here’s what you need to know about Thursday’s executions, including more about who the victims were.
Alabama executes Jeremy Williams for rape, murder of Georgia girl
Alabama executed 42-year-old Jeremy Williams for the 2021 rape and murder of 5-year-old Kamarie Holland.
“There are few words to adequately describe the depth and depravity of Jeremy Williams’ evil act,” Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey said in a statement. “Kamarie Holland is an innocent girl who is no longer with us, but she finally received justice tonight. May God bless little Kamarie Holland.”
On Dec. 13, 2021, Williams took Kamarie from her home in Columbus City, Georgia, after agreeing to pay the girl’s own mother to sexually abuse her, police say. They believe Kamarie’s mother, Kristy Siple, wanted the money for drugs.
Williams put Kamarie through unimaginable torment, including making her smoke meth, raping her while filming the assault, strangling her and then continuing to sexually abuse her after she was dead, according to police.
Unlike the majority of criminal defendants, Williams directed his attorneys to provide no defense for him at his trial in 2024. When the judge in the case handed down a death sentence, Williams also ordered his attorneys not to appeal.
That’s why Williams was executed five years after the crime. Most death row inmates are only executed after many years or decades of drawn-out appeals.
Williams has never expressed remorse for what he did or offered much in the way of an explanation, according to Lt. Jane Edenfield, who investigated the case for the Columbus Police Department in Georgia.
“His words were that he was just sick, and that’s it,” she told USA TODAY in an interview last week.
Jurors found Williams guilty of murder, sodomy, sexual abuse of a child, production of obscene material involving a child, human trafficking and abuse of a corpse. Siple is serving 20 years in prison after pleading guilty to the human sex trafficking of her daughter.
Though she was born to a mother who did an unspeakable thing to her, Kamarie Holland had a large, loving family with many siblings and a devoted dad who always called her Princess, according to police and archived news reports.
Her dad, Corey Holland, had full custody of Kamarie but sometimes let her stay with her mom, Edenfield said. It’s the biggest regret of his life, she said he testified at Williams’ trial. Holland was sobbing on the witness stand as he recalled how much he loved Kamarie.
“You took my little girl from me,” Edenfield remembers him telling Williams, who she said sat emotionless and stone-faced the entire trial.
“I miss you painfully PRINCESS,” Holland wrote on Facebook last month. And in 2022: “I still can’t believe you’re gone. I haven’t felt the same since that day you were taken from me.”
Carlos Cuesta-Rodriguez executed in Oklahoma for wife’s murder
Oklahoma executed Carlos Cuesta-Rodriguez for the 2003 murder of his common-law wife, 43-year-old Olimpia Fisher, who had been excited about becoming a grandmother when she was killed.
In the weeks leading up to the murder, Cuesta-Rodriguez’s behavior was growing increasingly obsessive, controlling, and violent, according to family, prosecutors, and court records. He stalked Fisher when she wasn’t home and was fixated on the idea that she was cheating on him with a co-worker.
On the night of May 31, 2003, Fisher and her pregnant 18-year-old daughter had packed their bags and nearly left the Oklahoma City home they shared with Cuesta-Rodriguez. But he had drunk a bottle of tequila and was in bed sleeping, so they figured it was safe to stay the night, court records say.
But Cuesta-Rodriguez woke up around 4:30 a.m. and confronted Fisher with cheating allegations. As her daughter watched in horror, he shot Fisher in the right eye. Eight minutes later as police tried to break in and a still-living Fisher fought to escape, Cuesta-Rodriguez shot her in the left eye, and she bled out on the floor.
After the execution, Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond said in a statement that he prays Fisher’s family “finds some measure of peace after enduring 23 years of unimaginable grief.”
Cuesta-Rodriguez’s attorneys argued strongly that he be spared from execution in front of the Oklahoma Board of Parole and Pardon last month. But Cuesta-Rodriguez, 77, shocked the room when he said the last thing he deserved was mercy.
“You must believe that I deserve to suffer. And you’re right,” he said, addressing Fisher’s two daughters. “It’s time for me to pay for what I did.”
After the execution, his family said in a statement that Cuesta-Rodriguez became a changed man while he was on death row and that he was “remorseful every single day, burdened by the weight of what he had done.”
“His legacy will not be measured by his worst moment,” they said. “But by the countless moments after − 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’s kindness and redemption can still ripple into the world.”
Fisher’s daughters, who decided not to witness the execution of their mother’s killer, said in a statement that they will “continue to honor and love her every day through our shared memories and raising our families to reflect the love and faith in God that she taught us.”
They continued: “We hope this tragedy and loss reminds everyone of the importance of domestic violence awareness.”
Anthony Hines executed in Tennessee for maid’s murder
Tennessee executed Anthony Darrell Hines for the 1985 murder of a 54-year-old mother of four named Catherine Jean Jenkins.
On March 3, 1985, Jenkins was working as a maid at a motel in Kingston Springs, Tennessee, when Hines attacked her as she cleaned a room. Hines stole $100 in cash from Jenkins, stabbed her to death and then fled in her car, according to court records. Hines, 66, has admitted to taking the car but has maintained that he did not kill Jenkins.
Hines’ attorneys had been fighting his execution amid growing calls for Gov. Bill Lee to intervene in the wake of the state’s botched execution of death row inmate Tony Carruthers in May. Tennessee called off Carruthers’ execution after a doctor failed to insert a backup intravenous line for about two hours, prompting Lee to grant Carruthers a one-year reprieve.
Lee said on Aug. 11 that he would not intervene in Hines’ lethal injection.
Hines’ attorney, Kit Thomas, previously said that it would be a “grotesque spectacle” if the doctor who failed to establish Carruthers’ IV line was going to be the same one presiding over Hines’ execution, reported The Tennessean, part of the USA TODAY Network. It wasn’t immediately clear Thursday if it was the same doctor.
Jenkins’ emotional family spoke to reporters after witnessing Hines’ execution.
“I got a few words to say for those of you that may be concerned as to whether or not this animal suffered,” said her son, Dennis Jenkins. “Let me tell you what he did to my mother 41 years ago. … He stabbed her 13 times, one of which went all the way through and came out her back. He then went on to sexually assault her with the same knife that he had just stabbed her with.”
He continued: “I hope he did suffer.”
Jenkins’ daughter, Melissa Jenkins, said that her family has “a deep void that will never be filled.”
“For four decades our family has endured the unimaginable pain and grief of her death,” she said. “How do we move forward from a loss like this? The truth is, we never truly do.”
She said that Hines’ execution does not bring closure or her mother back, but “it does finally bring justice.”
Contributing: Molly Davis, The Tennessean and Nolan Clay, The Oklahoman
Amanda Lee Myers is a senior crime reporter who covers cold case investigations and the death penalty for USA TODAY. Follow her on X at @amandaleeusat.