A Cobb County judge stayed the execution of Stacey Humphreys, 53, late Tuesday, hours before he was set to die by lethal injection in Georgia for the 2003 murders of two real estate agents, 21-year-old Lori Brown and 33-year-old Cindy Williams. The stay halts the execution unless a higher court lifts or overturns it.
Texas moved ahead as scheduled. LeJames Norman, 40, was set to be executed Wednesday for the 2005 triple murder of his neighbors during a robbery that turned deadly. His execution had originally been set for about an hour after Humphreys’ in Georgia.
Alabama is scheduled to execute Jeffery Lee, 50, on Thursday for a double murder committed during a 1998 pawn shop robbery.
Had Georgia’s execution gone forward, the country would have seen three men put to death across three states within roughly 24 hours.
An unusual stretch, but not coordinated
Death Penalty Information Center Executive Director Robin Maher told Fox News Digital the clustering is notable but coincidental.
“It’s not very common to have this many executions just across a couple of days,” Maher said. “This month, the month of September, we have seven executions scheduled. Last year in October, we had seven executions in a single month. But before then, we’d have to go back all the way to 2010 to see that number in a single month.”
“Just earlier this year, in August, there were three executions on the same day,” she continued. “This is an unusual year in that we’re seeing occurrences like a number of executions scheduled on the same day or during the same month. But there’s no evidence there’s any coordination among the states to have all these executions occur simultaneously. This looks largely to be a coincidence.”
On Aug. 13, Tennessee, Oklahoma and Alabama each carried out a lethal injection on the same day, the first time three states executed prisoners on the same day since Jan. 7, 2010. Weeks earlier, on July 28, Florida executed two people in a single day, its first double execution in decades.
The numbers so far
The US has carried out 25 executions in 2026, with 14 more currently scheduled for the rest of the year, a figure that could shift if courts issue stays or states set new death warrants.
Last year, 11 states carried out 47 executions total, the most in a single year since 2009.
Florida leads by a wide margin. The state executed 19 people in 2025, more than 40% of the national total, and has carried out 15 so far in 2026, accounting for 60% of this year’s executions. Across 2025 and 2026 combined, Florida is responsible for about 47% of all US executions, a pace driven by death warrants signed by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis.
Texas, Alabama and South Carolina follow. Texas carried out five executions in 2025 and three so far in 2026. Alabama executed five people in 2025 and one in 2026. South Carolina put five people to death, all in 2025.
“Last year was a very unusual year. It was the most executions we’ve seen in 15 years in the United States,” Maher said. “This year, we do not expect to reach that number of executions again. There are a number of other warrants that are still open for this year, but I don’t think we’ll reach the high that we reached last year.”
“All of this is really due to Florida,” Maher added. “Gov. DeSantis has decided that he wants to set a record in the number of executions that are conducted during his term. He has scheduled an execution for roughly every two weeks in the state of Florida, both last year and this year.”
Two more Florida executions remain scheduled for 2026: Curtis Beasley, 77, on Sept. 29 for the 1995 hammer killing of a woman, and William Lee Thompson, 74, on Oct. 13 for the 1976 murder of a woman beaten, tortured and killed with a chain-link belt.
