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, according to the source material.
Texas and Alabama advance separate cases
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, per the source text.
Alabama is scheduled to execute Jeffery Lee, 50, on Thursday for a double murder committed during a 1998 pawn shop robbery, according to the same source.
Had Georgia’s execution gone forward, the country would have seen three men put to death across three states within roughly 24 hours, the source notes.
DPIC: Unusual timing, not a coordinated plan
Death Penalty Information Center Executive Director Robin Maher told Fox News Digital the tight clustering is notable but coincidental. “It’s not very common to have this many executions just across a couple of days,” Maher said.
She added: “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.”
Recent clusters cited in the source
According to the same account, 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.
What’s next
The Georgia stay remains in effect unless a higher court lifts or overturns it. The Texas and Alabama matters described above were presented in the source as scheduled or set to proceed; the source does not confirm their completion.
