Two death row inmates were executed in Alabama and Texas in the southern United States on Thursday, bringing the number of executions in the country this year to 23.
In Alabama, 49-year-old Casey McWhorter was executed for murdering the father of one of his friends when he was just 18 years old.
He was sentenced to death in 1994 for shooting Edward Lee Williams the year before when he caught him, his son and another teenager searching his home. The other two teenagers, aged 16 and 15, were not sentenced to death because they were minors at the time of the events.
The death sentence was handed down by a jury of ten to two, although unanimity of the jury was not required in Alabama. This state, along with neighboring Florida (southeast), is one of only two in the United States that can sentence people to death without a unanimous verdict.
According to state authorities, Casey McWhorter was pronounced dead at 6:56 p.m. local time on Thursday.
In Texas, 53-year-old David Renteria was executed in 2001 for the kidnapping and murder of a five-year-old child.
At his trial, he denied being the murderer of the little girl Alexandra Flores, who was kidnapped as she left a hypermarket where she was doing Christmas shopping with her parents.
He said he was forced under threats from a gang to get rid of the child’s body, which was found burned the day after he was abducted.
Before his execution, David Renteria asked the girl’s relatives for forgiveness. He was pronounced dead at 7:11 p.m. local time on Thursday, according to a news release from Texas authorities.
These two deaths bring to 23 the number of executions that took place in the United States in 2023, all by lethal injection in five American states.
With eight executions this year, Texas is the state with the most executions, ahead of Alabama, where two convicts were executed.
Alabama has announced plans to execute convict Kenneth Smith by nitrogen inhalation in January 2024, which would be a world first. In this type of execution, death is caused by hypoxia (lack of oxygen).
According to a recent Gallup poll, 53% of Americans support the death penalty for those convicted of murder. This is the lowest level since 1972, when the Supreme Court blocked executions in the United States until their recovery four years later.
The death penalty has been abolished in 23 US states, while three other states, California (west), Oregon (northwest) and Pennsylvania (northeast), have a moratorium on its use.