Three men will be executed on the same day as death penalties rise in US

Anthony Darrell Hines, 66, who has maintained his innocence for four years and is bedridden, is scheduled to be executed in Tennessee on Thursday under the same protocol that failed twelve weeks ago with Carruthers.In Alabama, Jeremy Williams, convicted for the rape and murder of a 5-year-old girl in 2021, could be the southern state's first execution of 2026. Williams, who has dismissed his attorneys and has volunteered to be put to death, is slated to die by lethal injection and Alabama Governor Kay Ivey has said she does not plan to grant clemency.In Oklahoma, septuagenarian Carlos Cuesta-Rodriguez has asked for no clemency and no mercy for the murder of a woman in 2003. He is also slated to die by lethal injection on Thursday, but his age, experts say, heightens his risk for a botched execution.Thursday's planned executions are occurring amid a steady decline of support for the death penalty."It's the opposite of a cheap easy political fix," said Maya Foa, CEO of Reprieve US, an international legal organisation opposed to the death penalty.Just 52% of Americans say the death penalty is morally acceptable, the lowest number since the 1970s, a Gallup poll shows. Although over hal...