No execution is scheduled for today, but the calendar will not stay quiet for long. Three people are set to be put to death in the next nine days, and the nation carried out its 27th execution of 2026 just four days ago. The crime is rarely the whole story. What matters just as much is who defended the person, who sat on the jury, and what that jury never got to hear. Here is where the facts stand today.
Execution Alert: Texas
Ker’Sean Ramey, Wednesday, September 23
Texas is set to execute Ker’Sean Ramey, 41, on Wednesday in Huntsville. He was 20 in 2005 when Samuel Roberts, Tiffani Peacock, and Celso Lopez were shot to death during a botched drug robbery in Edna. His co-defendant, LeJames Norman, was executed on September 16 after the U.S. Supreme Court declined to step in. Norman was the fifth person Texas has executed this year, so Ramey would be the sixth.
Ramey has asked the Board of Pardons and Paroles and Gov. Greg Abbott for a commutation or a 180-day reprieve. According to the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, his application argues that his trial lawyer had never tried a capital case, worked as a dentist during the day with a solo law practice on the side, and was later suspended over his handling of a different client’s case. It also says the State struck every potential Black juror, leaving a jury of 11 white jurors and one Hispanic juror, and that jurors heard future dangerousness testimony from a State expert whose approach courts have since discredited. Those are the claims his advocates are making. The Sixth Amendment guarantees a lawyer, but courts set a high bar for proving that a lawyer was constitutionally inadequate.
There is a supply question as well. Norman and John Rubio, who is scheduled for November 12, sued in August to stop Texas from using pentobarbital, arguing the state’s supply was expired or came from unreliable compounding facilities. The Court of Criminal Appeals cleared the way for the executions after Attorney General Ken Paxton argued the lower court lacked jurisdiction. The prison system tests the drug’s potency and can extend its use date, a practice critics call unreliable.
Sources: TCADP, Texas Tribune and AP via Rick Halperin
Execution Alert: Florida
Curtis Wilkie Beasley Sr., Tuesday, September 29
Florida plans to execute Beasley, 77, for the 1995 hammer killing of a Polk County woman in her home. If it proceeds, it will be the state’s 16th execution this year. Florida has carried out 43 executions under Gov. Ron DeSantis, about 31 percent of the 140 the state has performed since 1976.
On Friday, DeSantis signed his 18th death warrant of 2026, for William Reaves, who was convicted of killing Indian River County Deputy Richard Raczkowski in 1986. The execution is set for October 20, though one local outlet reported October 27, so confirm the date with the Department of Corrections before relying on it. Reaves’ first conviction was reversed in 1991 because a prosecutor on the case had previously defended him in an unrelated criminal matter. His second jury recommended death by a vote of 10 to 2.
Source: WUSF and News Service of Florida
Execution Alert: Tennessee
Christa Pike, Wednesday, September 30
Pike is scheduled to die by lethal injection for the 1995 murder of Colleen Slemmer, a fellow Job Corps student in Knoxville. Pike was 18 at the time. If the execution proceeds, she would be the first woman executed in Tennessee in more than 200 years and, according to her legal team, the first person executed in the state’s modern era who was a teenager at the time of the offense.
Her lawyers filed a 226-page clemency petition with Gov. Bill Lee on September 3, asking him to reduce her sentence to life without parole. It documents repeated sexual abuse beginning around age two, along with mental illness that went untreated for years. Notably, the state’s attorney general told a court on August 13 that the state does not contest the abuse. On August 21, a special master rejected her challenge to Tennessee’s lethal injection protocol, finding she had not met the legal burden. Her team argues that the physician who oversaw the failed attempt to execute Tony Carruthers in May, and who is slated to oversee her execution, is not qualified to place a central line if one is needed. Press reports also say her lawyers have asked that only female corrections staff be present in the chamber, citing her history of abuse by men. Tennessee’s three Catholic bishops asked the governor on September 10 to halt the execution.
Sources: DPIC, WWMT, LADbible via Rick Halperin
Stays and Reprieves
William Thompson (Florida): execution paused for a competency review
Thompson, 74, was scheduled for October 13 for the 1976 murder of Sally Ivester in North Miami Beach. On September 17, DeSantis issued an executive order pausing the execution and appointing three psychiatrists to evaluate whether Thompson is competent to be executed. They are set to examine him on October 1 and report the next day. His attorneys say prison records note dementia and that he has been hospitalized repeatedly since August with conditions including heart failure, sepsis, and blood clots in both lungs. According to their petition, the warrant was signed less than 24 hours after he left a hospital, and he was moved to a death watch cell. They have asked the Florida Supreme Court to order that he receive proper medical care.
Source: Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty via Rick Halperin
Stacey Humphreys (Georgia): Stay stays in place, arguments set for December 8
Georgia’s first execution in more than two years was halted hours before it was set for September 16. A Cobb County judge ruled Humphreys is entitled to a hearing under the state’s 2025 Survivor Justice Act, which lets people seek reduced sentences when abuse contributed to their crimes. The Georgia Supreme Court left the stay in place and has set oral arguments for December 8. One detail deserves attention. A lawyer for the state argued that granting relief here could open the door for others, because in every capital case she has handled over two decades she has seen the same evidence of family abuse and mental health disorders. That is a striking thing for a prosecutor to say out loud, and it is exactly why what a jury hears about a defendant’s life matters so much.
Sources: Georgia Recorder, Cobb County Courier
Other Developments
Alabama executes Jeffery Lee over a jury’s vote for life
Alabama executed Lee, 49, by lethal injection on September 17, and he was pronounced dead at 6:22 p.m. In 2000, his jury voted 7 to 5 for life without parole, and the trial judge overrode it and imposed death. Alabama abolished judicial override in 2017 but did not make the change retroactive. About 25 people remain on Alabama’s death row because of override, five of them despite jury votes of 12 to 0 for life, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. Gov. Kay Ivey, who leaves office in January 2027, declined clemency, and her office said the 2017 law was clear that it would not apply to existing sentences. The execution came after a federal court blocked Alabama from using nitrogen gas on Lee and the U.S. Supreme Court declined to lift that ruling in June, so the state switched to lethal injection.
Source: Alabama Reflector, AP, and DPIC via Rick Halperin
Ohio: Tyrone Noling waits on the governor
On August 25, the Ohio Parole Board recommended that Gov. Mike DeWine commute Noling’s death sentence, with parole eligibility beginning in 2029. The vote was split: five members for commutation, one for a full pardon, and two against. Noling has always maintained his innocence in the 1990 murders of Cora and Bearnhardt Hartig. The board’s majority pointed to recanted testimony and alternative suspects who were never investigated, and at least one of his trial jurors has said she now doubts the verdict. DeWine called in June for Ohio to abolish the death penalty. I did not find a reported decision from him as of this morning.
Sources: Davis Vanguard, NBC News
Utah: Douglas Carter is back in court Tuesday
Carter, 71, was sentenced to death in 1985 for the murder of Eva Olesen in Provo. A judge vacated his conviction in 2022 over police and prosecutor misconduct, and the Utah Supreme Court affirmed. According to court documents, that misconduct included the lead detective threatening and paying key witnesses and telling them to lie about it. Prosecutors are seeking death again anyway. His lawyers have moved to dismiss over lost and poorly documented evidence, and they say State Crime Lab testing did not find his DNA on scene evidence. Tuesday’s hearing is expected to set a trial date and address the discovery dispute.
Sources: KSL, KSL NewsRadio, AP
North Carolina pushes toward resuming executions
North Carolina has not carried out an execution in 20 years, but Republican lawmakers want to restart them. Since the passage of Iryna’s Law, the state has committed funding to speed up post-conviction appeals, and 122 people are on death row. The obstacles are practical: the drugs for lethal injection are nearly impossible to obtain, and Gov. Josh Stein has said he will not approve alternatives such as the firing squad.
Source: Charlotte Observer via Rick Halperin
Coming Up
- Tuesday, September 22: Utah hearing in the Douglas Carter case
- Wednesday, September 23: Texas execution of Ker’Sean Ramey
- Tuesday, September 29: Florida execution of Curtis Beasley Sr.
- Wednesday, September 30: Tennessee execution of Christa Pike
- Thursday, October 1: Florida competency evaluation of William Thompson
Eleven executions are on the calendar for the rest of 2026. Each one will raise its own version of the same questions: who defended this person, what did the jury hear, and what did the state get wrong that it can no longer fix once the sentence is carried out. I will keep putting the facts in front of you.
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