Three killers executed on same day in US for 2nd time this year

Three states each executed death row inmates on Thursday, Nov. 5, marking the second such triple execution in the U.S. since August.

Indiana executed Jeffrey Weisheit, 50, by lethal injection for the 2010 murders of his girlfriend's two children, 8-year-old Alyssa Lynch and her 5-year-old brother, Caleb. Weisheit was pronounced dead at 12:45 a.m. local time on Thursday.

Weisheit's attorneys had futilely asked Indiana Gov. Mike Braun to pause his and all other executions in the state because of Christa Pike's botched lethal injection in Tennessee. Indiana uses the same single drug, pentobarbital, as Tennessee does for its executions.

Later on Thursday, Florida executed Jesse Guardado, 64, by lethal injection for the 2004 stabbing and beating death of a 75-year-old community activist named Jackie Malone. He was pronounced dead at 6:13 p.m. ET.

About an hour after the Florida execution, Alabama executed Michael Shannon Taylor, 55, by lethal injection for the 1991 beating deaths of an elderly couple, 83-year-old Ivan Moore and 79-year-old Lucille Moore. Taylor was pronounced dead at 6:10p.m. CT / 7:10 p.m. ET.

Three executions in one day is a rare occurrence in the modern era of the death penalty. Before this year, the last triple execution in the U.S. was 16 years ago. Death penalty observers say that double or triple executions are purely coincidental timing.

In August, Alabama, Tennessee and Oklahoma all executed death row inmates on the same day. The two triple executions this year reflect an overall uptick in the death penalty since the beginning of 2025, a pattern that experts attribute to the political climate under President Donald Trump and Florida's recent state record-breaking execution pace. Since January 2025, 11 states have put 79 inmates to death. That's more than any other two-year period in well over a decade.

The triple execution came on the same day that California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced that he is commuting the death sentences of the state's 548 death row inmates to life in prison, saying that "state-sanctioned killing is incompatible with California values." The move does not repeal the state's death penalty and only applies to current death sentences.

Just after Taylor's execution in Alabama, Gov. Kay Ivey said in a statement that she was "facing the Good Lord for final judgement tonight."

“California may let their criminals escape justice, but not Alabama," she added. "Here, we enforce the law and always will.”

Here's what you need to know about the three executions carried out on Thursday.

Indiana executes Jeffrey Weisheit for horrific murder of 2 children

Indiana executed Jeffrey Weisheit by lethal injection for setting his live-in girlfriend's house on fire and leaving her two children inside to suffer and die on April 10, 2010.

Investigators found that Weisheit had lit road flares under and around 5-year-old Caleb, while his 8-year-old sister Alyssa died in a closet, either because she had fled there or was trapped.

"There is no justification for the evil that was unleashed on my two children," their mother, Lisa Lynch, said just after Weisheit was sentenced to death in 2013, according to an archived story in the Evansville Courier & Press, part of the USA TODAY Network. "There is not a second that goes by that I don't miss my children and think about the memories we could have built."

In a prison interview with the Indiana Parole Board last month, Weisheit acknowledged setting the fire but struggled to explain why anger his toward Lynch led him to kill the children. “There is no excuse or explanation for what I did,” he said, according to the Indiana Capital Chronicle.

Weisheit said no last words before the state injected him with a fatal dose of pentobarbital, according to the Indiana Department of Correction. Indiana is the only state with an active death penalty that doesn't allow members of the news media to witness executions as the eyes and ears of the public.

The execution went forward despite controversy that included two recent botched pentobarbital executions in Tennessee and last-minute attempts from Weisheit's attorneys to stop the proceedings.

Weisheit's attorneys recently asked Braun to stop all executions in the state, citing Christa Pike's botched lethal injection on Sept. 30 and Tony Carruthers' in May. Joseph Perkovitch, one of Weisheit's attorneys, said there are "glaring" and "unmistakable" questions regarding pentobarbital.

On Nov. 2, Perkovitch revealed that Indiana bought its pentobarbital from a pharmacy the state is actively investigating and has placed on probation for drug contamination, reported IndyStar, part of the USA TODAY Network.

"It is alarming that the state purchased these drugs from a pharmacy it is trying to shut down due to major safety issues in the storage and management of drugs," Perkovich said in a statement.

Both the Indiana Department of Correction and the Office of the Attorney General said in statements that they were confident that the state would carry out the execution in compliance with state law. They did not address IndyStar's questions about the supplier's past infractions. The governor's office has not responded to IndyStar's questions.

The parole board declined to recommend clemency for Weisheit to Braun last week. On Nov. 2, Braun announced that he would not intervene in the execution, which is Indiana's first this year.

Florida executes Jesse Guardado for killing woman who helped him

Florida executed Jesse Guardado for the merciless killing of a 75-year-old community activist named Jackie Malone on Sept. 13, 2005. Guardado had met Malone a year before when she helped him find a place to stay, get a job and gave him some money after his release from prison for armed robberies, according to court records.

Guardado had a kitchen knife and a metal rod when he arrived at Malone's house in Defuniak Springs in Florida's Panhandle. Malone had been asleep but let Guardado in after he said he needed to use the phone.

Guardado used the rod to repeatedly hit Malone over the head, stabbed her five times in the chest and slashed her throat, court records say. Guardado stole Malone's jewelry, checkbook, purse, and cellphone, and fled. He later confessed to the murder and pleaded guilty

His attorneys and anti-death penalty activists in Florida had been arguing that he deserved mercy because of a horrific childhood filled with neglect, sexual abuse and exposure to drugs that led to a severe addiction.

A guard raped Guardado when he was in juvenile custody, and at the notorious Dozier School for Boys, he was beaten while shackled, witnessed sexual assaults, and feared staff would kill him, according to Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty. The jury deciding Guardado's fate never learned about his traumatic experiences, they added.

The group also said that Guardado deserved clemency because he had become a sober and faithful man in prison, and always deeply regretted killing Malone.

“I can offer no excuses for what I did, only my sincerest apologies and regrets," he wrote in a letter seeking clemency from Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.

DeSantis has never granted clemency to a death row inmate and has said that executions bring justice to victim families. No other Florida governor has overseen more executions in the modern era.

The Florida Supreme Court recently denied Guardado's request for a stay of execution, rejecting arguments from his attorneys that the state's clemency process is essentially meaningless because DeSantis has outright said that he will not grant clemency to people convicted of murder or felony sex offenses.

Guardado became the 19th inmate put to death in the state this year, matching the state's one-year record, set in 2025. The state plans to execute at least two more inmates by the end of the year.

Alabama executes Michael Shannon Taylor for elderly couple's murder

Alabama executed Michael Shannon Taylor by lethal injection for the Nov. 4, 1991, murder of an elderly couple he knew: 79-year-old Lucille Moore and her husband, 83-year-old Ivan Moore. Taylor, who was 19 at the time, was absent without leave from the Navy when he decided to go back to his hometown of Gadsden, Alabama, where he convinced the Moores to open their door to him before beating them to death with a metal bar, robbing them and going on a shopping spree, court records say.

Taylor became the third inmate put to death in Alabama this year.

Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall said in a statement that the execution was "long overdue" for the Moores' loved ones, who've been waiting 35 years for justice.

"The Moores showed kindness to a young man in need and were callously murdered for it," he said, calling the case "devastatingly grotesque."

Taylor's attorneys had been arguing that he had previously selected to be executed by nitrogen gas and that the state's new plan to put him to death by lethal injection violated his rights. The method change came four months after a federal Alabama judge blocked the state from using nitrogen gas, ruling that the method amounts to cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the U.S. Constitution.

Alabama was the first state in the nation to carry out a nitrogen gas execution, that of Kenneth Eugene Smith in 2024. The state executed six other inmates using the method, and Louisiana has used it once.

Contributing: Kristine Phillips, Indianapolis Star, Jon Webb, the Evansville Courier & Press, Sarah Clifton, the Montgomery Advertiser, and Daniella Segura, USA TODAY

Amanda Lee Myers is a senior crime and courts reporter who covers the death penalty, cold cases and breaking news for USA TODAY. Follow her on X at @amandaleeusat