The United States began a week of four scheduled executions on Tuesday with the deaths of two convicted murderers in Florida and Missouri, marking one of the busiest weeks for capital punishment in recent years.
In Florida, Samuel Smithers, 72, was executed by lethal injection at 6:15 p.m. (2215 GMT) for the 1996 killings of Christy Cowan and Denise Roach in Tampa. The women had been beaten and strangled before their bodies were dumped in a pond. Smithers, sentenced to death in 1999, was the 14th person executed in Florida this year.
Minutes later, in Missouri, Lance Shockley, 48, was put to death at 6:13 p.m. (2313 GMT) for the 2005 murder of police sergeant Carl Graham, who was investigating a fatal car accident involving Shockley at the time. Graham was ambushed and shot outside his home.
Shockley maintained his innocence until his death, but his appeals were rejected by several courts, including the US Supreme Court. Missouri Governor Mike Kehoe denied his clemency request on Monday.
Two more executions are scheduled this week. Charles Crawford, 59, is set to be executed in Mississippi on Wednesday for the 1994 rape and murder of Kristy Ray, a 20-year-old college student. On Friday, Richard Djerf, 55, is scheduled to die in Arizona for the brutal 1993 murders of four members of a Phoenix family.
In a letter last month, Djerf apologized for his crimes and said he would not seek clemency. “If I can’t find reason to spare my life, what reason would anyone else have?” he wrote.
So far, the United States has carried out 37 executions in 2025 — the highest annual number since 2013, when 39 inmates were put to death. Florida leads with 14 executions, followed by Texas with five, and South Carolina and Alabama with four each.
Most executions this year numbering up to 31, have been carried out by lethal injection, while two were by firing squad and four by nitrogen hypoxia, a method that induces suffocation using nitrogen gas. The United Nations has condemned the nitrogen method as cruel and inhumane.
Capital punishment remains legal in 27 of the 50 US states, while 23 have abolished it. Three others, California, Oregon, and Pennsylvania, maintain moratoriums on executions.
President Donald Trump has been a vocal supporter of the death penalty and, on his first day in office, called for expanding its use “for the vilest crimes.”