Three U.S. Executions Set Within 24 Hours as Death Penalty Use Climbs
Three states are preparing to carry out executions this week in cases that date back as far as 1998 and together left seven people dead, a burst of lethal injections that comes as a small group of states continues to drive up the nation’s use of the death penalty.
Texas and Georgia both plan to execute men on Wednesday, Sept. 16, within about an hour of each other. Alabama is scheduled to follow on Thursday, Sept. 17. If all three proceed, the year’s tally of executions in the United States will reach 28. Another 11 executions are already on the calendar, with more expected, as states such as Florida, Alabama, South Carolina and Texas account for most of the recent increase.
Here’s what to know about the three men and the crimes that led them to death row.
Georgia: Stacey Humphreys
Stacey Humphreys, 53, was convicted in the 2003 killings of two real estate agents in Powder Springs, Georgia, an Atlanta suburb. On Nov. 3, 2003, Lori Brown, 21, and Cyndi Williams, 33, were working out of a model home for a new subdivision when Humphreys walked in around 12:40 p.m. and found Williams alone, according to the Georgia Attorney General’s Office.
He forced Williams at gunpoint to undress, hand over her debit card and disclose her PIN, prosecutors said. After getting what he wanted, he choked her, forced her to the floor, and shot her in the back and then the head as she lay on her stomach, they said.
Brown then entered the office, and Humphreys attacked her, also forcing her to undress and turn over her debit card and PIN, according to prosecutors. He made her lie on the floor and shot her in the back of the head, they said.
Before his arrest in Wisconsin, Humphreys withdrew more than $3,000 from the women’s accounts, prosecutors said. Some of the money went toward a $565 payment on his new Dodge Durango. He told police he had taken out high-interest payday loans and had “got over my head with that stinking truck,” according to prosecutors.
During his murder trial, prosecutor Mark Cella told jurors 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 that jurors heard, Humphreys acknowledged guilt even as he said he did not remember the killings. “I know I did it,” he told police. “I know it just as well as my own name.”
Humphreys had been scheduled for execution on Dec. 17 last year, but the state parole board halted it two days earlier amid conflict-of-interest allegations involving two members weighing clemency. A judge later ruled one board member had to recuse herself because she had been assigned to the Humphreys case when she worked as a victim advocate. The judge found no conflict for the other member.
USA TODAY was unable to reach Brown’s or Williams’ family members for more about who they were.
Texas: LeJames Norman
LeJames Norman, 40, is set to be executed in Texas about an hour after Humphreys. He was convicted in the Aug. 24, 2005, killings of three neighbors during what began as a drug robbery that turned deadly.
On that day, 19-year-old Norman and his friend, Ker’Sean Ramey, were looking to score 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 searched 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, found the bodies. At Norman’s trial in 2008, Linda Coker told him 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-old daughter and lamented that her baby would never meet her aunt. “She was just a wonderful, loving person,” she said, the Advocate reported.
Norman, now 40, is set to be executed on Sept. 16, one week before Ramey’s execution. The state is executing both by lethal injection.
Norman has expressed remorse. His attorneys have argued that his troubled childhood led him down a path 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 young. At 10, he committed two robberies with a gun, and throughout his childhood he committed burglaries, assault and trespassing, court records say.
Norman’s attorneys also have argued he had ineffective legal counsel who failed to fully investigate whether he suffered brain trauma as a result of the “extraordinary level of violence” he experienced as a child, court records say.
Alabama: Jeffery Lee
Jeffery Lee, 50, is scheduled for execution in Alabama on Thursday, Sept. 17, for a double murder during a 1998 pawn shop holdup.
On Dec. 12, 1998, 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 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 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.”
A national uptick
If all three lethal injections move forward as expected, states will have executed 28 death row inmates this year. With another 11 executions already scheduled—and more expected to come—the total carried out or placed on the calendar this year reaches 39 in eight states.
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. Before this week, 25 executions had been carried out this year. Florida was responsible for 15 of them, or 60%.
Contributing: Sarah Clifton, the Montgomery Advertiser, and Swasti Singhai, USA TODAY.
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.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: US has 3 executions in 24 hours this week amid death penalty uptick