DPIC Analysis: What is the Most Number of Executions Carried Out in a Single Day?

Three states sched­uled exe­cu­tions for February 22, 2018.

Texas planned to exe­cute Thomas ​“Bart” Whitaker for the mur­ders of his moth­er and broth­er. Alabama planned to exe­cute Doyle Hamm, a 60-year-old man with ter­mi­nal cra­nial and lym­phat­ic can­cer that his lawyers said would make his veins unus­able for lethal injec­tion. Florida planned to exe­cute Eric Branch, who was uncon­sti­tu­tion­al­ly sen­tenced to death after a non-unan­i­mous 10 – 2 jury sentencing recommendation.

However, only one of the exe­cu­tions — that of Eric Branch in Florida — was car­ried out.

Bart Whitaker was spared less than an hour before his exe­cu­tion was to begin when Governor Greg Abbott com­mut­ed his death sen­tence to a sen­tence of life with­out pos­si­bil­i­ty of parole. Whitaker’s father, Kent, who had sur­vived the shoot­ing, had opposed the District Attorney’s deci­sion to seek the death penal­ty and sought the com­mu­ta­tion. After he met with the Texas Board of Pardons, the Board unan­i­mous­ly rec­om­mend­ed that Governor Abbott grant the commutation.

Doyle Hamm had sought to stay his exe­cu­tion based upon his med­ical con­di­tion. His exe­cu­tion was called off after exe­cu­tion per­son­nel unsuc­cess­ful­ly attempt­ed for two-and-one-half hours to set an intra­venous execution line.

Florida exe­cut­ed Branch despite the uncon­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of his death sen­tence. The state’s cap­i­tal-sen­tenc­ing pro­ce­dures — in which the jury was not asked to spec­i­fy what facts it found in con­sid­er­ing whether to sen­tence Branch to death — vio­late the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2016 rul­ing in Hurst v. Florida and its 2002 deci­sion in Ring v. Arizona that give cap­i­tal defen­dants the right to a jury deter­mi­na­tion of all facts nec­es­sary to impose the death penal­ty. The tri­al court’s impo­si­tion of the death penal­ty fol­low­ing the jury’s non-unan­i­mous sen­tenc­ing vote also vio­lat­ed the Florida Supreme Court’s 2016 rul­ing in Hurst v. State requir­ing a unan­i­mous jury ver­dict before the tri­al court can sen­tence a defen­dant to death. The Florida court ruled that it will apply its pro­hi­bi­tion against non-unan­i­mous death sen­tences to cas­es that had not com­plet­ed their direct appeals before Ring v. Arizona was decid­ed in June 2002, but not to cas­es like Branch’s that com­plet­ed direct appeal pri­or to that date.

While it is not unusu­al for mul­ti­ple states to sched­ule exe­cu­tions on the same day, it is rare that death war­rants for three or more exe­cu­tions remain active the week the exe­cu­tion is sched­uled to occur. It is even rar­er that three or more exe­cu­tions are car­ried out on the same day. 

States have car­ried out 3 or more exe­cu­tions on the same day 13 times since exe­cu­tions resumed in the United States in 1977, most recent­ly on January 7, 2010, when Louisiana, Ohio, and Texas all con­duct­ed exe­cu­tions. The most exe­cu­tions on any one day in the mod­ern era (since the 1970s) is four, when Oklahoma, Indiana, Texas, and Virginia all car­ried out exe­cu­tions on December 9, 1999.

The most exe­cu­tions car­ried out on a sin­gle day in United States his­to­ry was on December 26, 1862, when thir­ty-eight mem­bers of the Dakota tribe were exe­cut­ed by the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment in a mass hang­ing in Minnesota. 330 peo­ple had orig­i­nal­ly been sen­tenced to death fol­low­ing the con­clu­sion of a war between the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment and the Dakota tribe. In some instances, the rushed crim­i­nal tri­als report­ed­ly last­ed few­er than five min­utes, President Lincoln stayed the exe­cu­tion of all but thir­ty-eight. Some of the exe­cut­ed were lat­er deter­mined to have been vic­tims of mistaken identity.

Here are the days in the mod­ern era in which 3 or more exe­cu­tions have been carried out.

• August 28, 1987: Alabama, Florida, and Utah.
• August 3, 1994: Arkansas (3).
• January 8, 1997: Arkansas (3).
• November 19, 1997: Illinois (2) and Texas.
• April 22, 1998: Arizona, Missouri, and Texas.
• January 13, 1999: Arizona, Missouri, and Texas.
• February 24, 1999: Arizona, Missouri, and Texas.
• April 28, 1999: Missouri, Texas, and Virginia.
• December 9, 1999: Indiana, Oklahoma, Texas, and Virginia.
• March 15, 2000: Arizona, California, and Texas.
• August 30, 2000: Missouri, Texas, and Virginia.
• June 26, 2007: Georgia, Oklahoma, and Texas. 
• January 7, 2010: Louisiana, Ohio, and Texas.

For more details about these exe­cu­tions, see DPIC’s Execution Database.

Only one state has car­ried out three exe­cu­tions on the same day in the mod­ern era. Arkansas has done it twice; once on August 3, 1994 and again on January 8, 1997. The state most fre­quent­ly involved in these exe­cu­tions is Texas, which has done so ten times, includ­ing each of the last ten times it has occurred.

Because the death penal­ty — includ­ing exe­cu­tions — are admin­is­tered by the indi­vid­ual states, the coin­ci­den­tal sched­ul­ing of exe­cu­tions on the same day is bound to occur. Indeed, it has hap­pened on numer­ous occa­sions since DPIC began mon­i­tor­ing the out­comes of all death war­rants in 2014. See Outcomes of Death Warrants in 2014, 2015, 2016, and 2017.

The most recent time four exe­cu­tions were sched­uled for a sin­gle date was October 18, 2017. However, three of those death war­rants were Ohio exe­cu­tion dates that were resched­uled long before the exe­cu­tion was to be car­ried out. There was no time that more than one death war­rant was active for that date. Three exe­cu­tions were sched­uled for July 26 and September 13, 2017, but again because of Ohio resched­ul­ing, nev­er more than one death war­rant for that date was active at any time. There were 14 oth­er days in 2017 in which two exe­cu­tions were scheduled.

In 2016, there were two days on which three exe­cu­tions were sched­uled. Neither had three war­rants still active going into the execution week.

Four states sched­uled exe­cu­tions (two were car­ried out) on January 15, 2015. There were three exe­cu­tions that week. Four exe­cu­tions were sched­uled (but all were stayed) for November 3, 2015. There were two oth­er dates in 2015 in which three exe­cu­tions were sched­uled, but each involved the resched­uled Ohio executions.

— Robert Dunham

February 19, 2018 [updat­ed to reflect the out­come of the warrants]