Four men are set for execution this week. It's the busiest death penalty month since 2011.

Four men are set to be executed in the U.S. this week as the nation experiences the single busiest month for the death penalty in nearly 15 years.

On Tuesday, Oct. 14, Missouri and Florida are scheduled to execute inmates within an hour of each other. The next day, Mississippi is set to carry out another execution and Arizona has one on Friday. Victims of the inmates include a family of four, a college student kidnapped from her bedroom, and a state trooper who was ambushed in his driveway.

The executions are among seven this month. If all of them move forward, it will be the single busiest month for executions in the U.S. since May 2011. That's according to a USA TODAY analysis of a database kept by the Death Penalty Information Center, a nonprofit that tracks the use of the death penalty in the U.S. without taking a position on it.

The busy October comes amid an overall rise in executions in 2025 and an expansion of the execution methods used as experts credit the increase to the political climate under President Donald Trump. So far this year, states have executed 35 inmates − a figure that hasn't been seen since 2014.

Here's what to know about this week's executions.

Lance Shockley in Missouri

Lance Shockley, 48, was convicted of the 2005 murder of 37-year-old Sgt. Carl "Dewayne" Graham Jr. of the Missouri State Highway Patrol. Graham, a father of a 4-year-old boy at the time, was ambushed and shot in the back with a high-powered rifle as he arrived home in the small rural city of Van Buren. He was then shot in the head.

Prosecutors argued that Shockley's motive to kill Graham was because the trooper was investigating him as the prime suspect in a case of leaving the scene of a fatal accident.

Shockley has always said he is innocent of the murder. At trial, his attorney told jurors that there was no witness to the crime, no DNA, no confession, and no ballistic or physical evidence connecting Shockley to Graham's murder.

The Missouri Supreme Court found in 2013 that the cirumstantial evidence in the case was "strong" and that it was enough to hold up the death sentence.

Shockley's current attorneys have been fighting for DNA testing of the evidence in the case that wasn't available in 2005 and argue that a mistrial should have been declared over misconduct by the jury foreperson, who showed off his book about a revenge killing to fellow jurors.

So far no court has granted the DNA testing and last month, the Missouri Court of Appeals declined to consider multiple briefs from forensic DNA experts about the case.

"There are still serious and unanswered questions about Lance Shockley’s guilt,” Shockley's attorney, TC Tanski, said in a statement. “He was convicted on purely circumstantial evidence, questionable forensic methods, and a timeline that never aligned with the facts or witness accounts. Modern DNA testing could help answer those questions once and for all, but the State of Missouri refuses to allow it."

He added: "We will never know the truth if the evidence remains untested.”

Missouri is set to execute Shockley by lethal injection on Oct. 14, in what would be the state's first execution in more than a year.

Samuel Lee Smithers in Florida

Samuel Lee Smithers, 72, was convicted of murdering two Tampa women in 1996: 24-year-old Denise Roach and 31-year-old Christy Cowan.

Smithers, a married deacon at a church in the Tampa suburb of Plant City, made a partial confession to killing both women, who were sex workers, and dumping them in a Plant City pond.

Smithers told police that he got into an argument with Cowan over money he owed her for sex, so he hit her on the head with an axe, threw her in the pond and "finished her off" with a garden hoe, according to court records.

Smithers told police that he also argued with Roach, and that he hit her and threw her into the pond, but at trial he testified that he watched another man kill her. At trial, he also blamed Cowan's killing on the man, whom he said was blackmailing him.

Smithers' current attorneys are arguing that exe­cut­ing an elder­ly per­son vio­lates his constitutional protections against cru­el and unusu­al pun­ish­ment and no longer serves the ini­tial pur­pose of his death sen­tence.

Smithers is set to be executed by lethal injection on Oct. 14. He would be the 14th inmate executed in Florida this year, a record.

Charles Ray Crawford in Mississippi

Charles Ray Crawford, 59, was convicted of the 1993 kidnapping, rape and murder of 20-year-old college student Kristy Ray.

Crawford was out on bail for attacking two young women when he broke into Ray's bedroom window at her parents' house in the small rural community of Chalybeate. She was found stabbed to death in the nearby woods.

Ray was a student at Northeast Mississippi Community College.

At trial, Crawford's attorneys acknowledged his guilt to lay the groundwork for an insanity defense, even though that's not how Crawford wanted to handle the case, according to reporting by the Mississippi Clarion Ledger, part of the USA TODAY Network.

Crawford's attorneys have argued that he deserves a new trial because of the conduct of his trial attorneys.

"Charles Crawford's constitutional rights to make the most fundamental choices regarding whether, and how, to defend his life and liberty were violated," attorney Beth Windham argued in court documents.

Mississippi is set to execute Crawford by lethal injection on Oct. 15 in what would be the state's second execution this year.

Richard Djerf in Arizona

Richard Djerf, 55, was convicted of the 1993 murder of a Phoenix family of four: Albert Luna Sr., his wife, Patricia Luna, and their two children, 17-year-old Rochelle and 5-year-old Damien. Djerf targeted the family of his roommate, Albert Luna Jr., whom he believed had stolen from him.

Djerf admitted to tying up Patricia and Damien Luna, who were the only ones at home. When Rochelle got home, he admitted to tying her to a bed, raping her and slitting her throat before walking back out and shooting Damien in front of his mother and then shooting her. When Albert Luna Sr. arrived home, Djerf said that he attacked him with a bat and a struggle ensued, during which Djerf was stabbed. Djerf managed to end the fight by shooting Luna in the head.

Albert Luna Jr. was the one who found the bodies of his parents and siblings.

In a handwritten statement provided to The Arizona Republic − part of the USA TODAY Network − Djerf said he wasn't going to try to stop his execution and that he hoped his death would "bring some measure of peace" to the victims' family.

"I forced my way into the home of the Luna family and brutally murdered 4 innocent people in a cruel, heinous and depraved manner," Djerf said in the statement. "I became so consumed with vengeance that I could think of nothing else."

Although he said experts have diagnosed with him some brain dysfunction, that doesn't mean he deserves to live.

"The results of this testing may help explain why I did what I did," he wrote. "But they can never excuse the harm I caused."

Djerf is set to be executed on Friday, Oct. 17 in Arizona's second execution of the year.

Contributing: Elena Santa Cruz, The Arizona Republic and Lici Beveridge, the Mississippi Clarion Ledger

Amanda Lee Myers is a senior crime reporter who covers executions for USA TODAY. Follow her on X at @amandaleeusat.