US has 3 executions in 24 hours this week amid death penalty uptick - USA Today
Three states are set to carry out executions this week in decades-old cases involving a total of seven murder victims.
The executions will begin in Texas and Georgia, with each state planning to put a man to death within an hour of each other on Wednesday, Sept. 16. Alabama is set to carry out an execution the next day.
Stacey Humphreys, a 53-year-old inmate being executed in Georgia, was convicted of the 2003 murders of two real estate agents, 21-year-old Lori Brown and 33-year-old Cindy Williams. In Texas about an hour after Humphreys' execution, the state is set to put LeJames Norman, 40, to death for the triple murder of his neighbors during a robbery that turned deadly in 2005.
And on Thursday, Sept. 17, Alabama plans to execute Jeffery Lee, 50, for a double murder during a pawn shop holdup in 1998.
If all three lethal injections move forward as expected, states will have executed 28 death row inmates this year. With another 11 executions scheduled, and more expected to come, a small number of states are continuing a two-year uptick in the death penalty.
Here's what you need to know about each execution being carried out this week and more about the crimes involved.
It was Nov. 3, 2003, and 21-year-old Lori Brown and 33-year-old Cyndi Williams were working out of a model home for a new subdivision in the Atlanta suburb of Powder Springs.
At about 12:40 p.m., Humphreys walked in to find Williams alone. At gunpoint, Humphreys forced Williams to take her clothes off, hand over her debit card and and tell him her PIN number, according to the Georgia Attorney General's Office.
Once he got what he wanted, Humphreys began choking Williams before forcing her to the floor. As she lay on her stomach, he shot her in the back and then the head, prosecutors said.
Brown then walked into the office and Humphreys immediately attacked her. Humphreys also forced Brown to undress and hand over her debit card and pin number. He then made her get on the floor and shot her in the back of the head, prosecutors said.
In the days following the murders before his arrest in Wisconsin, Humphreys had withdrawn over $3,000 from the women's accounts. He used some of the money to make a $565 payment on his new Dodge Durango truck, telling police that he had taken out some high interest payday lows and "got over my head with that stinking truck," prosecutors said.
During the subsequent murder trial, prosecutor Mark Cella told jurors that Humphreys had "an abandoned and malignant heart."
"It's all about money," Cella said in 2007, according to an archived story in the Florida Times-Union, part of the USA TODAY Network. "They had to die so he could make his truck payment."
In a police interview, Humphreys acknowledged he was guilty even though he said he didn't remember committing the murders.
"I know I did it," he told police in an interview that jurors got to hear. "I know it just as well as my own name."
Humphreys had been set to be executed last year on Dec. 17, but the state's parole board stopped it two days beforehand over conflict of interest allegations involving two board members weighing whether to grant Humphreys clemency. A judge later ruled that one board member had to recuse herself because she was assigned to the Humphreys case when she used to be a victim advocate. The judge found that another board member did not have a conflict.
USA TODAY has not been able to reach Brown's or Williams' family members to learn more about who they were.
On Aug. 24, 2005, 19-year-old LeJames Norman and his friend, Ker’Sean Ramey, were looking to score some cocaine and decided to rob their neighbor, 38-year-old Celso Lopez.
Norman and Ramey forced their way into Lopez's home and held him at gunpoint as they looked for drugs, according to court records. At some point Norman shot Lopez, though he claimed it was an accident.
Lopez’s roommates, 18-year-old Tiffani Peacock and 24-year-old Sam Roberts, walked in on the scene. The two had been dating and were close.
“Norman forced Peacock to her knees and shot her in the head,” court records say. Roberts tried to flee but both Norman and Ramey shot him. Ramey shot all three victims several more times to make sure they were dead, court records say.
“It was an execution,” prosecutor Eli Garza said during Ramey's 2007 trial, according to an archived story in the Victoria Advocate.
Roberts' parents, Linda and Steve Coker, were the ones to find the bodies. At Norman's trial in 2008, Linda Coker told him that she had forgiven him, according to the Advocate.
“LeJames, my heart goes out to your family,” she said. “What you’ve done, you didn’t just hurt my family, you also destroyed your family.”
Peacock's sister, Tabatha Hastings, was at Norman's sentencing with her 9-month-daughter and lamented that her baby would never get to meet her aunt. “She was just a wonderful, loving person,” she said, the Advocate reported.
Norman, who is now 40, is set to be executed on Sept. 16, one week before Ramey's execution. The state is executing them both by lethal injection.
Norman has expressed remorse for the killings. His attorneys have argued that his troubled childhood took him down a path that led to the murders and that he deserves mercy, saying he grew up in and out of homeless shelters and endured physical abuse at the hands of his parents, who were described in court records as associating with gang members and selling drugs. When Norman was a boy, a police officer shot and killed his father, which court records say “greatly affected Norman.”
Norman’s encounters with the law began at a young age. At 10, he committed two robberies with a gun – and throughout his childhood, committed burglaries, assault and trespassing, court records say.
Norman's attorneys also have argued that he had ineffective legal counsel who failed to fully investigate whether he had suffered brain trauma as a result of the "extraordinary level of violence," he experienced as a child, court records say.
On Dec. 12, 1998, Jeffery Lee walked into a pawn shop and shouted "Give me your money!" as two accomplices waited in a car, court records say. Within six seconds, Lee used a 12-gauge shotgun to shoot Jimmy Ellis, Elaine Thompson and Helen King, court records and archived news reports show.
Ellis and Thompson were killed while King survived the shooting, which drew national attention because Ellis was a noted Elvis impersonator at the time. Ellis performed under the stage name Orion, and a 2015 documentary tells his life story. ("Orion: The Man Who Would Be King")
A jury found Lee guilty of first-degree murder. In a move that still draws protests today, the judge in the case sentenced Lee to death despite the jury voting 7-5 to give him life in prison without parole. The practice − called judicial override − was abolished in Alabama in 2017.
Lee, now 50, had been set to be executed by the controversial new method of nitrogen gas on June 11. But two days beforehand, a federal Alabama judge stopped the state from carrying it out, ruling that the method amounts to cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the U.S. Constitution.
The ruling came after U.S. District Judge Emily Marks presided over a hearing about how much pain inmates feel during a nitrogen gas execution. She concluded that they experience up to three minutes of "severe air hunger" resulting in emotional distress, anxiety, physiological stress, and physical discomfort. Marks' ruling blocks the state from using the method.
Alabama was the first state in the nation to carry out a nitrogen gas execution, that of Kenneth Eugene Smith in 2024. The state executed six other inmates using the method, and Louisiana has used it once.
Alabama rescheduled Lee's execution, only this time using the more common lethal injection method. Marks recently declined a request from Lee's attorneys to again stop the execution.
"The legal process has run its full and proper course," Attorney General Steve Marshall said in a statement in June. "The people of Alabama have not forgotten Jimmy and Elaine. I have not forgotten them. Anything short of carrying out the sentence imposed by the court falls short of justice for the victims, and that is not what victims of this state deserve.”
So far this year, 39 executions have either been carried out or are scheduled in eight states, with more expected to be added to the calendar.
Last year, 11 states carried out 47 executions, with most being carried out in Florida, Alabama, South Carolina and Texas. It was the most executions carried out in a single year in the U.S. since 2009.
Florida has been executing a state record number of inmates. Of the 72 executions carried out in the U.S. since 2025, Florida accounts for 34 of them. That's 47%, and that figure is increasing. Of this year's 25 executions, Florida has carried out 15. That's 60%.
Amanda Lee Myers is a senior crime reporter who covers the death penalty, cold cases and breaking news for USA TODAY. Follow her on X at @amandaleeusat.
