Indiana carries out first of three US executions scheduled on the same day

A prisoner has been put to death in the US state of Indiana on Thursday, in the first of three lethal injections scheduled for the same day in the United States, with Florida and Alabama each planning to execute one man later in the day.

Jeffrey Weisheit, 50, was pronounced dead at 12:45am at the state prison in Michigan City, according to Noelle Russell, a spokesperson for the state's department of correction. She said he had no final words.

Weisheit had acknowledged killing his girlfriend's two children in a house fire in the Evansville area in 2010, but had hoped Governor Mike Braun would grant clemency and change his sentence to life in prison. Braun declined.

Florida's execution later on Thursday would be the state's 19th this year under Republican Governor Ron DeSantis, matching a record set by the state in 2025. Florida has carried out more than half of the 32 executions in the US so far this year, and the day would be the second time this year that three people are put to death on the same day.

Jesse Guardado is set for execution in Florida later on Thursday. He was convicted of fatally stabbing a 75-year-old woman inside her Walton County home in 2004 before stealing her jewelry box, $80 and other valuables to buy drugs. She had helped him get a job and housing. Guardado, now 64, had a court appeal turned down.

In Alabama, Michael Taylor is set to die by lethal injection on Thursday. In 1991, when he was 19, he beat two people, aged 83 and 79, to death with a metal bar during a robbery in their home in Gadsden.

Death penalty opponents had urged Alabama's Republican Governor Kay Ivey to reduce Taylor's sentence to life in prison, but she declined. Esther Brown of Project Hope to Abolish the Death Penalty said that if the state kills Michael, it is not the 19-year-old who made the worst mistake of his life whom it kills, but the mature, well-respected, God-fearing man sitting in that cell today.

Taylor's case also involved a dispute over the execution method. After a judge declared the nitrogen gas method unconstitutional, the state planned to execute him by lethal injection. His attorneys objected to the last-minute switch since he had selected nitrogen gas as his method several years ago, but a judge ruled against Taylor. He is now 54.

Alabama executed murderer Kenneth Smith in 2024 by nitrogen asphyxiation, after previously failing in its attempt to kill him using lethal injection.

The death penalty in the US has faced renewed scrutiny since the September failed execution of Christa Pike in Tennessee, in which she survived two massive doses of pentobarbital. Courts have nevertheless rejected efforts to halt other executions after her case.

In Indiana, Weisheit's lawyers failed to persuade the governor to allow him to undergo brain scans to assess a history of head injuries and mental health problems, and had asked for a life sentence. His last objection centred on the state's planned use of lethal drugs purchased from a pharmacy that is facing a disciplinary hearing next week in front of the Indiana pharmacy board, the state regulatory agency.

Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita said the execution provided long-awaited justice for Alyssa Lynch and her brother Caleb, two innocent children whose lives were stolen in an act of unspeakable cruelty.