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By Khaleda Rahman
National Correspondent
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Two death row inmates were executed on Thursday, the first in a series of five scheduled across the United States over a period of eight days.
Raymond Johnson was executed in Oklahoma on Thursday morning. Later on Thursday, Edward Busby was executed in Texas, hours after the U.S. Supreme Court lifted a stay over his disabilities claims.
Busby's execution was the 600th in Texas since it resumed carrying out the death penalty in 1982, after the Supreme Court reinstated it in 1976.
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Three more executions are scheduled to take place in three states next week. Kim Kardashian has joined efforts to halt the scheduled May 21 execution of Tony Carruthers in Tennessee so that forensic evidence that could exonerate him can be tested.
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Why It Matters
Twelve executions have now taken place in the first four months of 2026. Florida has led the way, executing six people so far this year, followed by Texas, which has carried out four executions.
It comes after executions in 2025 reached the highest level recorded in the U.S. since 2009, with 47 carried out in 11 states—19 of them in Florida, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. Twenty-five executions took place in 2024. The surge—after years of decline at a time when support for the death penalty is at a 50-year low—came after President Donald Trump signed an executive order on his first day back in office seeking to expand the death penalty and as Florida and other Republican-controlled state legislatures enacted laws to expand the use of capital punishment.
Who Has Been Executed?
Raymond Johnson
Johnson, 52, was pronounced dead at 10:12 a.m. on Thursday following a three-drug injection at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester.
He was condemned for the June 2007 death of his ex-girlfriend, 24-year-old Brooke Whitaker, and her 7-month-old daughter, Kya.
"To Brooke and Kya and your family, I want to apologize for my actions and the pain I caused you," Johnson said while strapped to a gurney inside the death chamber, The Associated Press reported. "I hope people can speak your names without my name attached to it. I hurt you. One day, I hope you can forgive me."
Prosecutors said Johnson and Whitaker had been arguing at her home in Tulsa before he repeatedly hit her over the head with a metal claw hammer. Whitaker’s skull was fractured and she had more than 20 lacerations on her face and scalp.
But she was still conscious and begged Johnson to spare her and Kya, who was sleeping in a bedroom, prosecutors said in documents prepared for Johnson’s clemency hearing in April.
Johnson’s attorneys did not file a last-minute appeal with the Supreme Court to try and stop his execution. His attorneys had unsuccessfully argued in prior appeals that Johnson’s arrest was illegal, his confession had been coerced by police and his trial lawyer had conceded without his permission his guilt.
In April, Oklahoma’s five-member Pardon and Parole Board voted unanimously to deny Johnson clemency.
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Edward Busby
Busby, 53, was pronounced dead at 8:11 p.m. following a lethal injection at the state penitentiary in Huntsville.
He was sentenced to death for the slaying of 77-year-old retired Texas Christian University professor Laura Lee Crane. Prosecutors said she was abducted from a Fort Worth grocery store parking lot in January 2004 and left to suffocate in the trunk of her car with duct tape wrapped heavily around her face, covering her mouth and nose.
Busby repeatedly apologized and asked for forgiveness in his final words before being executed.
"I am so sorry, I ask that you please, please don't hate me and that you can find it in your heart to forgive me for the part that I played in what happened to her," he said, according to a transcript provided to Newsweek by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.
"Ms. Crane was a lovely woman. I never meant anything bad to happen to her. I am so sorry, I am so, so sorry, but I feel asleep and I don't know what happened. Please forgive me."
He added: "I wish I could take it all back. With all my heart I wish I could take it back. My sister has to live without me now, to become a victim. I had no right to even get in that car, but I will take the blame, I will take the blame if it will help."
Busby’s attorneys had filed an appeal for a stay, arguing that new testing proved he was intellectually disabled, which made him ineligible to be put to death under the Eighth Amendment. Experts for both Busby and the state previously found he was intellectually disabled.
The Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals granted a temporary stay, with Judge Stephen Higginson arguing that Busby’s appeal could be shaped by a pending Supreme Court ruling in a separate case that could determine how courts consider the effect of multiple IQ tests in determining eligibility for the death penalty, The Texas Tribune reported. But the U.S. Supreme Court lifted the stay on Thursday, clearing the way for Busby's execution to proceed.
"Thirty-four percent of all executions in the current death penalty era in the United States have taken place in Texas," Abe Bonowitz, the executive director of Death Penalty Action, a national anti-death penalty group, told Newsweek.
Busby’s case "spells out one more time how the courts don’t care about the law," he said.
"Enough is enough…600 executions have not made us any safer than we would be if we just used a sentence of death by incarceration."
Who Is Facing Execution?
Leroy McGill
McGill, 63, is scheduled to be executed in Arizona on May 20. He was sentenced to death after being convicted of murder for fatally setting Charles Perez on fire during a 2002 attack.
If it goes ahead, it will be Arizona’s first execution of the year and the third since executions in the state were put on hold in 2023 amid concerns over its use of the death penalty.
According to legal action nongovernmental organization Reprieve, Richard Djerf was subjected to a "prolonged ordeal, as officials repeatedly punctured both arms when trying to place an IV line" during his execution last year.
"Extreme pain is routinely inflicted, but neither this Supreme Court, nor Trump’s [Department of Justice], nor the states on the sharp end care—what matters to them is that the number of executions keeps rising," Matt Wells, the deputy director of Reprieve US, said in a statement to Newsweek.
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Tony Carruthers
Carruthers is scheduled to be executed in Tennessee on May 21.
He was convicted in 1996 of robbing and killing Marcellos Anderson, 21, Frederick Tucker, 17, and Anderson’s mother, Delois Anderson, 43, in 1994. Authorities said Marcellos Anderson was a drug dealer, and Carruthers was trying to take over the illegal drug trade in their Memphis neighborhood.
A motion filed in April by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and ACLU of Tennessee is seeking DNA testing that could exonerate Carruthers. The motion is seeking to have the unmatched fingerprints and other DNA evidence in the case tested against a different suspect that was identified by one of Carruthers’ co-defendants.
In an Instagram story earlier this week, Kardashian called for people to urge Tennessee Governor Bill Lee to halt Carruthers’ execution.
"Tennessee is about to execute Tony Carruthers without testing DNA and fingerprint evidence that could prove his innocence," Kardashian wrote in the post, according to the Memphis Commercial Appeal. "Call Governor Lee's office at 615-412-3133 and ask him to test the DNA before it's too late."
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Richard Knight
Knight, 47, is scheduled to be executed in Florida on May 21.
He was convicted of the 2000 fatal stabbing of his cousin’s girlfriend Odessia Stephens and her 4-year-old daughter, Hanessia Mullings.
If it goes ahead, his execution would be the seventh to take place in Florida this year.
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Update 5/15/26, 5:47 a.m. ET: This article has been updated with a new headline and new information.
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