As many as five executions are set to be carried out in the United States in a span of just one week. This is an unusually high number, and if finally carried out, this will be the first time in more than 20 years, that is since July 2003, that five were held in seven days, the nonprofit Death Penalty Information Center revealed. The executions are being carried out in Alabama, Missouri, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Texas.
One of the executions – the one in South Carolina – has already been carried out. Freddie Owens was put to death for the 1997 murder of a convenience store clerk during a robbery. This was the first execution carried out in South Carolina in 13 years. Owens was put to death by lethal injection at Broad River Correctional Institution.
If the five other death row inmates are executed, the US will have reached 1,600 executions since the US Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976.
Who are the four remaining death row inmates awaiting execution?
Alabama is preparing to carry out the nation’s second execution ever using nitrogen gas this week. Alan Miller was sentenced to death for the murders of three men during back-to-back workplace shootings in 1999. Alabama became the first state to use the new procedure in January this year.
Texas is set to execute Travis Mullis, who killed his three--month-old son in January 2008. Mullis, who has a history of mental illness, repeatedly tried to waive his right to appeal his death sentence. He will be put to death by lethal injection.
{{/usCountry}}Texas is set to execute Travis Mullis, who killed his three--month-old son in January 2008. Mullis, who has a history of mental illness, repeatedly tried to waive his right to appeal his death sentence. He will be put to death by lethal injection.
{{/usCountry}}Marcellus Williams will also receive the lethal injection this week in Missouri. He was accused of fatally stabbing a woman in the St. Louis suburb of University City in 1998.
Emmanuel Littlejohn is set to be put to death in Oklahoma this week, also by lethal injection, for his role in the 1992 shooting death of a convenience store owner during a robbery. While Littlejohn admitted that he was indeed involved in the robbery, he has claimed that he did not fire the fatal shot.