Oklahoma and Texas carry out executions on the same day

The 36th and 37th Executions of 2026

Texas and Oklahoma each have executed death row inmates on November 12, 2026 for merciless murders they committed decades ago, reported the USA Today.

Oklahoma executed James Dwight Pavatt, 72, for the 2001 murder of his lover's estranged husband, Rob Andrew. Pavatt, a 22-year Air Force veteran, became lovers with Brenda Andrew after meeting her at church, and both were convicted of shooting Rob Andrew dead. Brenda Andrew, a former Sunday school teacher, is the only woman on Oklahoma's death row and has always maintained her innocence, as has Pavatt.

Pavatt, who was executed by lethal injection, was pronounced dead at 10:12 a.m. local time on Thursday, Nov. 12.

About eight hours later, Texas executed John Allen Rubio, 46, for the 2003 beheadings of his common-law wife's three children: 3-year-old Julissa Quesada, 1-year-old John Stephan Rubio and 2-month-old Mary Jane Rubio. Mary Jane was the only biological child of Rubio's. Rubio was pronounced dead at 6:47 p.m. CT.

Pavatt and Rubio became the 36th and 37th inmates put to death this year in the U.S., which is seeing an uptick in the death penalty that began in 2025. Double executions − in which two separate states execute inmates on the same day − are purely coincidental timing.

For its lethal injections, Texas uses pentobarbital, the same drug used in the botched execution of Christa Pike in September. Oklahoma uses a three-drug combination that doesn't include pentobarbital.

Texas executes John Allen Rubio, who claimed he was 'chosen one'

On March 11, 2003, 23-year-old John Allen Rubio began talking about the anti-Christ and told his common-law wife, 23-year-old Angela Camacho, that her three children were possessed.

Rubio first attacked his only biological child, 2-month-old Mary Jane, decapitating her, before getting Camacho to hold down 3-year-old Julissa while he decapitated her, according to court records and the couple's own admissions. Rubio also decapitated 1-year-old John when the baby woke up crying, court records say.

Rubio, who was known to sniff paint, later told police that he was "the chosen one" and that he had been selected "to help the world" and "help give their life to Jesus," according to archived news reports.

The unthinkable crime shocked the Texas border city of Brownsville at the time and remains infamous today.

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A jury rejected Rubio's plea of not guilty by reason of insanity and he was sentenced to death. Camacho was sentenced to life in prison.

Over the years during a lengthy appeals process, judges repeatedly found Rubio competent enough to stand trial and be executed, including during a hearing last month. As the hearing was underway, a woman began screaming at Rubio that he killed her niece and that her family would be there to watch him die on Nov. 12, according to local news media outlets Valley Central and myRGV.com.

"You’re going to meet your father the devil that day," she said, though she declined to share her name, according to the outlets.

Outside the courtroom, she told reporters that Rubio was a hypocrite and a coward, saying that he only cried during the hearing for himself.

“He’s crying because he’s scared that he’s going to die," she said, according to Valley Central. "He didn’t even look me in the eye and say he was sorry."

Oklahoma executes James Dwight Pavatt

On Nov. 20, 2001, Rob Andrew was picking up his 7-year-old son and 10-year-old daughter for Thanksgiving at the home they shared with their mother, Brenda Andrew. But Brenda Andrew told Rob Andrew that the pilot light on the furnace was out, so he went to the garage to take a look.

Once there, prosecutors say James Dwight Pavatt used Rob Andrew's own 16-gauge shotgun to shoot him once. Then, they say, Brenda Andrew shot him. Pavatt also shot Brenda Andrew in the arm with a .22-caliber pistol to make it look like she was a victim, too, prosecutors say.

Brenda Andrew told police that two masked men had attacked and shot her husband. Police later found evidence that Pavatt hid afterward in the attic of the home of the Andrews' next-door neighbors, who were away.

As police suspicions about her story grew, Pavatt and Brenda Andrew fled to Mexico with her children. After running out of money, the couple returned to the U.S. in February 2002 and were arrested at the border.

A jury convicted Pavatt of first-degree murder and sentenced him to death in 2003. In a separate trial in 2004, a jury convicted Andrew of first-degree murder and sentenced her to death.

Brenda Andrew's conviction has come under scrutiny and gained national attention in recent years over concerns that she didn't receive a fair trial because of the way prosecutors portrayed her to jurors. At one point, a prosecutor held up a pair of her thong underwear and asked jurors if they thought a grieving widow really wear such a sexy undergarment.

The jurors also heard from five witnesses who told them about how Andrew dressed sexy in low-cut shirts and short skirts.

Andrew was unfairly portrayed as "a scarlet woman, a modern Jezebel ... plucking away any realistic chance that the jury would seriously consider her version of events," wrote 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Robert Bacharach in 2023.

The U.S. Supreme Court later ordered a lower court to review Andrew's claim of an unfair trial, saying that prosecutors came to acknowledge that Andrew's sex life and failings as a mother and wife were largely irrelevant to whether she killed her husband. The lower court upheld Andrew's conviction and death sentence earlier this year.

As for Pavatt, he had always maintained his innocence and reiterated that before the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board on Oct. 14: "I am not guilty of shooting anyone," he told the board.

Pavatt also apologized to Rob Andrew's family for their heartbreak and said he wished he had answers for them.

"I fell in love with Brenda. We had an affair," he told the board. "I was so infatuated with her that I lost sight of what was really happening. I had tunnel vision, and I believed everything that she told me. ... I had no reason to believe that anything she had said to me was not true, including what she told the police had happened that night."

He said he left for Mexico because Brenda Andrew had said she would kill herself and her children rather than go to jail.

"I knew this made us look guilty but I believed that whoever killed Rob would be arrested and ... once that had happened, we could come back," he said. "It was not until my trial that I began to see the extent to which I had been manipulated by Brenda. I can see why the jury ... believed that we were both involved in Rob's murder."

He did not address evidence that he cut the brake lines to Rob Andrew's vehicle a month before the shooting.

Pavatt also sought mercy because of his nearly 22 years of service in the U.S. Air Force, both overseas and at Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma. He finished his military career as a master sergeant.

The parole board voted 3-2 against recommending clemency for Pavatt.

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Richard Glossip will not be tried a third time for murder

Less than a month before he was scheduled to stand trial a third time, accused of a murder he has always sworn he did not commit, Richard Glossip agreed to plead guilty to a lesser charge, a final step toward bringing his three-decade legal saga to an end, reported The Intercept.

Glossip, 63, was twice convicted and sentenced to death for the 1997 murder of his boss Barry Van Treese inside Room 102 of the rundown motel the Van Treese family owned on the outskirts of Oklahoma City. A 19-year-old maintenance man named Justin Sneed admitted to killing Van Treese, but he insisted Glossip put him up to it. Sneed, who is currently serving a life sentence, escaped the death penalty by becoming the star witness against Glossip.

During a brief hearing that was originally scheduled to address pretrial matters, Oklahoma County Court Judge Natalie Mai instead accepted a plea from Glossip to accessory after the fact and dismissed the murder charge against him. With members of Van Treese’s family looking on from their seats in the jury box, Glossip stood to answer a series of routine questions to confirm that his plea was voluntary. Mai did not ask any specific questions about the crime itself.

Glossip, 63, was twice convicted and sentenced to death for the 1997 murder of his boss Barry Van Treese inside Room 102 of the rundown motel the Van Treese family owned on the outskirts of Oklahoma City. A 19-year-old maintenance man named Justin Sneed admitted to killing Van Treese, but he insisted Glossip put him up to it. Sneed, who is currently serving a life sentence, escaped the death penalty by becoming the star witness against Glossip.

Following Glossip’s second trip to the U.S. Supreme Court his conviction was overturned in 2025, finding that it was rooted in false testimony and prosecutorial misconduct. Drummond, who by then was running for governor, did an abrupt about-face, announcing he would once again prosecute Glossip for first degree murder.

“For 30 years, Richard Glossip has maintained his innocence,” Knight said in a statement after the hearing. “After nearly executing him 9 times, the State of Oklahoma has now dismissed the murder charge against him. This morning, to finally put this matter to rest, Rich pleaded guilty to being an accessory after the fact. We believe Rich has more than paid his debt to society.”

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Intellectually disabled death row inmate will not likely get another bite of the apple from SCOTUS

The Supreme Court appears likely to shut down a Texas death row inmate’s efforts to use updated medical guidelines to secure another chance at challenging his conviction, reported Courthouse News Service.

Dexter Johnson didn’t initially argue that his execution would violate the Eighth Amendment. But the American Psychiatric Association’s 2013 edition of its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, known as DSM-5, adopted new guidelines that classified Johnson as intellectually disabled.

By the time Johnson was convicted of murdering Maria Aparece in 2007, the Supreme Court’s ruling in Atkins v. Virginia, which held it was unconstitutional to execute a person who is intellectually disabled, had been on the books for five years. But Johnson didn’t meet the criteria for such a claim until six years after his conviction.

During his trial, experts testified that Johnson had the intellectual functioning equivalent to a 10-year-old, and his lawyers say he has severe language deficits that place him “well below the lowest one percentile’” of the population. But his IQ scores of 79 and 88 precluded an intellectual disability diagnosis during his trial and initial appeals.

The DSM-5 moved away from solely focusing on IQ scores, taking into consideration other deficits. And the updated guidelines recognized that individuals with IQ scores over 70 may still qualify as intellectually disabled.

The Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act only permits individuals to file one habeas application unless they can show their claim relies on “a new rule of constitutional law made retroactive to cases on collateral review by the Supreme Court that was previously unavailable.”

The Fifth Circuit found Johnson qualified for the exception, allowing him to proceed with a successive federal habeas application. But on Wednesday, the Supreme Court appeared to disagree.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh, a Donald Trump appointee, questioned if Johnson’s case would set a precedent for “eternal Atkins claims and zero finality” because medical standards around intellectual disability are constantly evolving.

And his conservative colleagues were generally skeptical that claims under the two-decade-old precedent could be considered new.

“Does Atkins ever stop being a new rule?” Justice Clarence Thomas, a George H.W. Bush appointee, asked.

Justice Amy Coney Barrett, another Trump appointee, compared Johnson’s definition of new to the invention of the telephone.

“I mean when Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone, that was new,” Barrett said. “I don’t think anybody would describe the telephone as new today.”

The liberal wing of the court seemed to side with Johnson, however, stating the Supreme Court in Atkins indicated that who qualifies as intellectually disabled is keyed to medical standards, which can vary and evolve.

As such, Justice Elena Kagan, a Barack Obama appointee, said it was apt to think of Atkins as having multiple rules as those standards have evolved over the last two decades.

“It would be wrong to think of Atkins as a single rule that we decided exactly when we decided the Atkins case given that Atkins was very cognizant that the substantive standard for the rule was going to be supplied principally by diagnostic criteria,” Kagan said. “So, if the diagnostic criteria fundamentally changes…you basically get an Atkins II rule, and then the question with respect to that defendant would be whether that is new.”

Instead of considering whether the claims were generally “new,” Justice Ketani Brown Jackson, a Joe Biden appointee, said the court should consider whether the claim is new to a particular individual.

Despite support from the three Democratic appointees, it did not appear Johnson had enough support from the Republican appointees to reach a majority.

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Support for the death penalty falls below 50 percent

Forty-nine percent of U.S. adults are in favor of the death penalty for convicted murderers, and 45% are opposed, according to Gallup. While statistically similar to last year’s 52%, the latest update marks the first time support has been below the majority level since 1971, when it was also at 49%. The last time support was lower than now was in 1966, when a record-low 42% favored the death penalty. The high point for support was 80% in 1994.

Laura Porter, Executive Director, U.S. Campaign to End the Death Penalty said, “This is the second poll in a row to show that we are at a pivotal turning point in public opinion on the death penalty, as Americans have been horrified by the recent botched executions, as well as the proposal to livestream an execution. At the same time, both Republican and Democratic governors have been granting clemencies at an increasing pace. The death penalty is being seen for what it is, an utter failure.”

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The arbitrary nature of the death penalty--geography dictates state sponsored death

California Governor Gavin Newsom commuted the sentences of every prisoner on the state’s death row—548 people in all. With this action, Newsom is responsible for the largest-ever reduction of America’s death-row population, dropping the national total by about 27 percent. (California’s supreme court must approve some of the clemency requests.), reported The Atlantic.

California last executed a prisoner in 2006, and in 2019 Newsom instituted a moratorium against the death penalty via executive order. But in both 2012 and 2016, Californians narrowly voted against ballot measures that would have repealed the state’s death penalty, meaning many in the state would still prefer to see it in use. Newsom’s commutation order could foreclose that possibility in at least the near future.

Newsom’s commutations underscore how polarized the country has become on the death penalty. Although several states have rejected capital punishment in recent years, a handful of red states are pushing back against that trend, taking ever more extreme measures to hand down death sentences and carry out executions.

America’s death-penalty landscape is defined by dueling philosophies, which means that prisoners convicted of capital crimes face radically different outcomes depending on minor changes in geography: The fate of the same person committing the same murder on either side of the border between Texas, where executions are relatively common, and New Mexico, which does not permit capital punishment, would come down to only a few miles.

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Mangino discusses Netflix series "Taken" on Sidebar with Jesse Weber

Watch my interview on Law &Crime's Sidebar with Jesse Weber discussing the Netflix series "Taken" about the disappearance and murder of Natalee Holloway.

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Florida, Alabama and Indiana carry out three executions in a single day

 The 34th and 35th Executions of 2026

Florida, Alabama and Indiana all carried out executions on November 5, 2026, putting to death three people on a day when California Gov. Gavin Newsom said he would commute hundreds of death sentences before leaving office, reported The Associated Press. I wrote about the 33rd execution in Indiana here.           

The unusual trio of executions on a single day in the U.S., and Newsom’s plans that experts say would represent the largest mass clemency in American history, underscored national divisions over capital punishment. They also come at a time of renewed attention over the death penalty following Tennessee’s botched execution of Christa Pike in September.

In Florida, the state tied a record with its 19th execution this year and is on track to set a new mark in the coming weeks. Indiana executed a man for killing two children by setting a house fire in 2010, and in Alabama, a man was put to death by lethal injection over killing an older man and woman in a home robbery.

“California may let their criminals escape justice, but not Alabama,” Republican Gov. Kay Ivey said. “Here, we enforce the law and always will.”

It marked the second time since August that three states had conducted executions on a single day, although it remains unusual. Previously, the last time it happened was 2010.

Florida inmate apologized to victims

Jesse Guardado was pronounced dead at 6:13 p.m. following a lethal injection at a state prison in Starke. He had pleaded guilty to fatally stabbing Jackie Malone, 75, inside her Walton County home in 2004 before stealing her jewelry box, $80 and other valuables to buy drugs. The woman had helped him get a job and housing.

Florida has carried out more than half of the nation’s 35 executions so far this year under outgoing Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis.

Guardado, 64, was already strapped to a gurney with an IV in his arm when the death chamber curtain went up promptly at 6 p.m. Asked if he had a last statement, he replied, “I would like to once again apologize for the pain and suffering I’ve caused to the victim’s family and my own family as well.”

The drugs began flowing immediately afterward. Guardado began breathing heavily, followed by some sputtering and twitching. Soon after, a warden shook Guardado and shouted his name but got no response and a medic then pronounced him dead.

DeSantis, who leaves office in January, has said he wants to bring justice to victims’ families who have often waited decades for death sentences to be carried out. He signed the death warrants that led to a state record of 19 executions in 2025. The state is planning two more executions later this year.

Patrick Malone, the victim’s son, told reporters that he questioned those who oppose the death penalty.

“Do such people ever think about what happened to the victim or consider the unending aftermath the victim’s family endures and relives every time that terrible event comes up?” Malone said.

Alabama man was condemned for a double killing

In Alabama, Michael Taylor, 54, was pronounced dead at 6:10 p.m. local time after a lethal injection. The execution got underway shortly before 6 p.m. as Taylor replied “no, sir” when asked if he had any final words.

He appeared to mouth “thank you” toward his attorneys seated in the witness room. Taylor’s spiritual adviser approached and prayed with him, and he closed his eyes, never opening them again.

In 1991, Taylor, then 19, fatally beat Ivan Moore, 83, and his wife Lucille, 79, with a metal bar during a robbery in their Gadsden, Alabama, home. Police arrested him in their Cadillac an hour away in Birmingham.

Death penalty opponents had urged Ivey to commute Taylor’s sentence to life in prison, noting his age and immaturity then. She declined.

The victims’ family thanked the state attorney general’s office for bringing closure, but they lamented having to wait 35 years for the death sentence to be imposed.

“We know that a person has the right to appeal, but there should come a time when the jury’s decision is final. For all these years, our family has had to live with the waiting, the delays, and the uncertainty,” the family said in a statement. “We have never forgotten our loved ones or what was taken from us.”

The state switched Taylor’s execution method after a judge declared a nitrogen gas method unconstitutional. His attorneys objected since he selected nitrogen gas as his method years ago, but a judge ruled against Taylor.

Attorneys for Taylor said in a statement that he knew the harm he had caused and that “Michael’s life was proof that God isn’t finished with any of us.”

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