Jeremy Williams, 42, was executed by lethal injection at the William C. Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore, Alabama, for the 2021 kidnapping, rape, and murder of five-year-old Kamarie Holland. Williams had pleaded guilty to four counts of capital murder and requested the death penalty to bring closure to the victim's family.
Crime and sentencing
Prosecutors said Williams raped and strangled Holland after offering her mother $2,500 for the child to perform oral sex on him, which was reduced to $1,300 (£960) after negotiations. They added that Williams filmed his attack and kept her body to continue to abuse.
Kamarie's mother told police that her daughter was gone when she woke up at 5:50am on December 13, 2021, and the front door of their Columbus, Georgia, home was open. Kamarie's body was found late that night at an abandoned home in nearby Phenix City, Alabama, where Williams once lived.
Williams was charged with four counts of capital murder in 2022 after confessing to the killing. On March 13, 2024, he pleaded guilty to all four counts, asking for the death penalty. He did not present any mitigating evidence during sentencing, and the trial court sentenced him to death.
In 2022, Williams was also charged with the 2005 death of his infant daughter in Alaska. Russell County District Attorney Richard Chancey said: "This man left a trail of destruction of children."
Rare same-day executions
About a tenth of executed inmates are so-called volunteers who drop appeals, according to the Death Penalty Information Centre, but most have been on death row longer. Robin Maher, executive director of the centre, said the time between Williams' 2024 conviction and his lethal injection was unusually brief.
His execution came with two others in Tennessee and Oklahoma, making it the first time in nearly 16 years three inmates have been put to death on the same day in the US. Maher said it was highly unusual to have three executions in one day, although this was largely a scheduling coincidence.
He added: "You look at the country as a whole, you've just got this little pocket of five or six states that are using the death penalty, executing people, and a small number of states that are still imposing new death sentences."
Other executions
Oklahoma executed Carlos Cuesta-Rodriguez, 70, for the 2003 murder of his girlfriend. Prosecutors said Olimpia Fisher, 43, was making plans to leave him when he shot her in one eye and then waited about eight minutes as she screamed for help before firing the fatal shot into her other eye.
Last month, Oklahoma's Pardon and Parole Board voted 3-1 against recommending clemency for Cuesta-Rodriguez. His attorneys had asked for life in prison without parole, citing his difficult childhood and health issues. But Cuesta-Rodriguez said he did not want clemency, expressing regret for his actions.
Anthony Darrell Hines was also executed in Tennessee, three months after the attempted lethal injection of another inmate was called off because of problems inserting an IV. Hines, 66, had unsuccessfully asked the governor and courts to intervene, claiming his health issues increase the risk of difficulties. Gov. Bill Lee refused to act, and the Tennessee Supreme Court ruled against a stay.
Hines was convicted of stabbing Catherine Jean Jenkins, 54, to death in 1985 while she was working as a motel maid in Kingston Springs. He was first sentenced to death in 1986, won an appeal for a new sentencing hearing, and was again sentenced to death in 1989.
