FILE – This Oct. 9, 2014, file photo shows the gurney in the execution chamber at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester, Okla.
Sue Ogrocki/AP
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Three men in Tennessee, Alabama and Oklahoma are scheduled for lethal injection Thursday in a rare convergence of executions on the same day in the U.S.
A man in Tennessee faces execution for killing a motel maid. An Oklahoma man is scheduled to die for killing his girlfriend. And an Alabama man will be put to death after dropping all his appeals in the killing of a 5-year-old girl he paid her mother to abuse.
Eleven states carried out executions in 2025 in the U.S. If the Tennessee and Alabama deaths take place, six states will have had executions in 2026.
The last time three executions were held on the same day was Jan. 7, 2010, when Louisiana, Ohio and Texas put inmates to death. Three executions were scheduled on the same day in 2018, but only one went forward after a Texas man was granted a reprieve and prison officials in Alabama had problems with the IV line.
Florida executed two men on the same day in July and has put 31 prisoners to death since the start of 2025.
Tennessee plans to execute Anthony Darrell Hines for the 1985 murder of Catherine Jean Jenkins.
Hines stabbed Jenkins to death while the 54-year-old was working as a motel maid in Kingston Springs. He was sentenced to death in 1986, won an appeal for a new sentencing hearing and was again sentenced to death in 1989.
Hines' execution date comes just three months after the attempted lethal injection of another man was called off because of a problem inserting an IV.
Hines, 66, appealed unsuccessfully to the governor and the courts, saying that the doctor who oversaw the May execution was unqualified and likely to botch his execution as well. He said his thinness and muscular atrophy after two strokes mean he could face problems with an IV as well.
During the attempted execution of Tony Carruthers, the IV team established a primary line right away but then worked for more than an hour trying to insert a backup line. Carruthers' lawyer witnessed the attempts and said the team tried to insert an IV in Carruthers' arm, hand and foot before attempting to insert a central line.
In the end, Gov. Bill Lee called off the execution and gave Carruthers a one-year reprieve.
The state has declined to say whether the same doctor will preside over Hines' execution. Regardless, the Tennessee Supreme Court ruled Hines had not proven the doctor was unqualified and suggested the problems were an isolated mishap.
Alabama is scheduled to execute Jeremy Williams by lethal injection for the 2021 rape and murder of a 5-year-old Georgia girl.
Williams, who pleaded guilty to killing Kamarie Holland, declined to appeal and asked for his death sentence to be carried out.