Three executed across the US on same day – for the second time this year

Three death row inmates were executed on Thursday, the second time that has happened since August.

Prior to this year, the last triple execution on the same day occurred in 2010. The executions took place in three states: Indiana, Alabama and Florida.

​The first man of the day to be executed was 50-year-old Jeffrey Weisheit, who was convicted of killing his girlfriend’s children – Alyssa and Caleb Lynch – in 2010.

Weisheit was pronounced dead in Indiana at 12.45 a.m. local time after being administered the lethal injection, Noelle Russell, the chief communications officer at the Indiana Department of Correction, confirmed to The Associated Press.

​The convicted murderer’s attorneys had previously asked the state governor to freeze executions in the state, which uses pentobarbital to carry out executions. That is the same drug used in Christa Pike’s failed execution, which left the woman – who was convicted of the 1995 murder of her classmate – with what she has described as a “physical” pain and a “pain in my mind.”

​The second execution occurred in Florida when 64-year-old Jesse Guardado was pronounced dead at 6.13 p.m. Eastern Time, the Florida Department of Corrections confirmed. Guardado was executed after being convicted of stabbing and beating to death a 75-year-old in 2004.

​The final execution took place in Alabama, with Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall confirming that Michael Shannon Taylor had been delivered the lethal injection having been convicted of murdering an elderly couple in 1991.

​Alabama was also one of the three states to be involved in August’s triple execution, along with Tennessee and Oklahoma.

Elsewhere on Thursday, California Governor Gavin Newsom commuted the sentences of all 548 people on death row in California and converted them to life in prison. The state has not executed an inmate since 2006.

​Alabama Governor Kay Ivey hit out at a move by her Californian counterpart in a statement released after Taylor’s death.

​“California may let their criminals escape justice, but not Alabama," she said in the statement obtained by CBS News. "Here, we enforce the law and always will.”

​The number of executions in the U.S. has risen in President Trump’s second term, with the commander-in-chief sigining an executive order directing the Department of Justice to prioritize seeking the death penalty to “protect public safety.”

The U.S. carried out 47 executions last year alone, the highest figure since 2009, according to Amnesty International. Despite the uptick in executions during Trump’s presidency, there has been a general trend away from the death penalty in the U.S. throughout the 21st Century with several abolishing it altogether.