Oklahoma death row inmate Carlos Cuesta-Rodriguez executed for 2003 murder
Nolan ClayMcALESTER − Oklahoma has carried out the first of three executions that took place on the same day in the United States for the first time in 16 years.
Carlos Cuesta-Rodriguez was pronounced dead at 10:13 a.m. on Thursday, Aug. 13, at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary.
He was put to death by lethal injection for the murder of his common-law wife in 2003 at their Oklahoma City home. He admitted to police he shot her twice during an argument.
Cuesta-Rodriguez, 70, did not fight for his life, stunning his attorneys in July when he told the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board that he didn't want clemency. "It's time for me to pay for what I did," he said at the hearing.
He had no official last words Thursday.
From the gurney, he looked at his stepdaughter and niece on the front row of the witness room and spoke to them inaudibly three times. "I love you," he mouthed clearly the first time. The relatives sobbed at times. One blew him a kiss, a media witness said.
In the execution chamber, a spiritual adviser, Kheit Nguyen, a Catholic priest, stood at his feet.
An execution also was carried out Thursday morning in Tennessee. Anthony Darrell Hines, 66, was pronounced dead at 10:43 a.m. at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville.
The third execution took place Thursday evening in Alabama. A child killer, Jeremy Williams, 42, was pronounced dead at 6:16 p.m.
The busy day was another sign of the resurgence of the death penalty in the country.
What to know about the Oklahoma crime
Cuesta-Rodriguez shot Olimpia Fisher at their south Oklahoma City home early May 31, 2003. He used a double-barrel Derringer-style handgun that fired shotgun shells.
He told police afterward she was cheating on him. Both his current attorneys and attorneys for the state said he was wrong in that belief.
He shot Fisher first in the right eye in front of her youngest daughter, who was 18 at the time and pregnant, according to testimony at his trial. Still alive, Fisher fought back as her daughter fled the house and called police.
He shot Fisher eight minutes later in her left eye. By that time, police officers had arrived and heard her screams for help. The officers were unable to enter immediately because metal security bars blocked their entry.
He was 47 at the time. The victim was 43.
Jurors at a 2007 trial in Oklahoma County District Court found Cuesta-Rodriguez guilty of first-degree murder. They chose the death penalty as punishment after deciding he was a continuing threat to society and what he did was especially heinous, atrocious or cruel.
"I can't have been in my right mind to have done something so horrific. To this day I have not been able to find any sense in all this," he said by video at the clemency hearing after apologizing to the victim's two daughters.
After the shooting, police asked him, "What do you think? I mean what kind of punishment do you think you deserve?"
"Be dead, like her," he said, according to a transcript of his interview.
"To be dead like her?" he was asked.
"Yeah. I told her I won't live without her," he said.
Attorney General Gentner Drummond and his assistants told the Pardon and Parole Board that Cuesta-Rodriguez had been thinking about killing Fisher for months. They told the board he wrote his mother that Fisher was a whore who belonged to the pigs and that she would pay for her "sins."
The Pardon and Parole Board denied clemency in a 3-1 vote July 14.
His attorneys still tried to block his execution, arguing to the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals he should not be put to death because he is mentally ill.
They told the court he killed "amidst an acute mental health crisis characterized by psychotic delusions of infidelity and abandonment." They argued executing him would violate state and federal constitutional prohibitions against cruel and/or unusual punishment.
The appeals court on Aug. 6 denied his request for relief.
Cuesta-Rodriguez was born in Cuba and came to the United States with thousands of others during the 1980 Mariel Boatlift. He was locked up for years after a drug conviction in California changed his immigration status, his attorneys said.
He was eventually released in 1988 rather than being returned to Cuba. He stayed in Oklahoma after being sent to a halfway house in the state.
The director of the Oklahoma Department of Corrections, Justin Farris, described the 11-minute execution as unremarkable.
"There was some labored breathing," the director acknowledged. "I think that was due to ... without going into medical stuff ... probably some sleep apnea or something like that."
The inmate had his last meal at 5:02 p.m. Wednesday, Farris said. Cuesta-Rodriguez requested a Cuban sandwich, Rocky Road ice cream, donuts and a bottle of water.
Both the victims' daughters, Cinthya Allen and Katya Wallis, spoke at the clemency hearing in July but did not witness the execution Thursday. At the hearing in July, Wallis recalled seeing her mother shot the first time.
"It was so precise. It was so intentional. Such a clear shot," she said. "I couldn't stop it. I was on the other side of the bed."
The daughters focused on their mom in a statement to the media after the execution.
"We continue to honor and love her every day through our shared memories and raising our families to reflect the love and faith in God that she taught us," they said. "Our faith in Jesus has allowed us to forgive.
"We hope this tragedy and loss reminds everyone of the importance of domestic violence awareness."
The last time three states carried out executions on the same day was in 2010, according to a USA TODAY analysis of data kept by the nonprofit Death Penalty Information Center. That year the executions were in Ohio, Texas and Louisiana.
Executions rose from 25 in 2024 to 47 in 2025 in the United States, the Death Penalty Information Center reported.
"The change is due almost entirely to a dramatic increase in executions in Florida, which alone accounted for 19 executions, or 40% of the year’s total," it said.
The executions Thursday brought to 22 the total nationwide in 2026.
Also a factor in the resurgence of capital punishment is President Donald Trump. On his first day back in office last year, Trump issued a sweeping executive order "restoring" the death penalty. His order has resulted in the death penalty being sought in federal cases across the nation, including in Oklahoma.
Trump called capital punishment "an essential tool for deterring and punishing those who would commit the most heinous crimes and acts of lethal violence against American citizens."
The Oklahoma Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty called the execution of Cuesta-Rodriguez needless. Opponents of capital punishment held a vigil Thursday morning outside the governor's mansion in Oklahoma City.
The family of Cuesta-Rodriguez said in a media statement after the execution that he was "a different man from the one who committed his horrible crime."
The family said he was remorseful every single day and burdened by the weight of what he had done "but defined by decades of living humbly, gently, and with unwavering love and devotion to his family and to inmates far worse off than himself."
(This story has been updated).