These 3 men are all scheduled to be executed tonight

Three death row inmates -- in Alabama, Florida, and Texas -- are scheduled to be executed Thursday evening. If all three go ahead, it will be the first time in eight years that the United States has executed three people on the same day.

The three scheduled executions come at a time when public support for the death penalty has dwindled to a 45-year-low. Meanwhile, the number of executions annually has also dropped. Faced with a nationwide shortage of traditional lethal injection drugs due to pharma companies banning use of their products for capital punishment, states have been scrambling to come up with viable alternatives, sometimes resulting in botched executions.

Alabama

Doyle Lee Hamm, 61, has been on Alabama’s death row for more than 30 years after being sentenced in 1987 for murdering Patrick Cunningham, a motel night clerk, during a robbery.

Hamm was diagnosed with cranial cancer and lymphatic cancer in 2014. His lawyer has argued that Hamm’s condition and treatment has compromised his veins, making a botched execution more likely. Last September, an anesthesiologist from Columbia University Medical Center examined Hamm and determined that he had no usable veins. Two human rights experts from the United Nations weighed in on Hamm’s case, calling on Alabama to halt his execution “amid concerns that the use of a lethal injection could amount to cruel, inhuman. or degrading treatment or punishment, and possibly torture.”

Nonetheless, Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall on Wednesday rejected the request by Hamm’s lawyer to halt his execution. “Tomorrow I will not request that Doyle Hamm’s execution be stopped, but instead I will ask that justice be served,” Marshall said in a video on Facebook.

Alabama was one of eight states to put someone to death in 2017, accounting for three of the 23 total executions nationwide, all by lethal injection and concentrated in Heartland and Southern states.

Florida

Eric Scott Branch, 47, has been on Florida’s death row since 1993. Branch was convicted for the rape and fatal beating of Susan Morris, a 21-year-old student from the University of West Florida. Morris was found naked in a shallow grave near a hiking trail. After killing her, Branch stole her car.

Branch was also convicted of two other sexual assaults, including of a 14-year-old girl in his home state of Indiana, and one in Florida just days before Morris was murdered.

In 1994, a jury sentenced Branch to death by a 10-2 vote. However, that was under Florida’s old sentencing rules, which the U.S. Supreme Court found unconstitutional in 2016 because they didn’t require a unanimous jury to hand down a death sentence. Florida’s system now requires a unanimous jury, and the state’s Supreme Court decided that only inmates sentenced to death post-2002 could get new sentencing hearings.

In a last-minute appeal, lawyers representing Branch argued that the cut-off point was arbitrary and unfair, and excluded about 150 death row inmates from having their sentences reviewed.

Florida’s death penalty protocol received considerable scrutiny from abolitionists last year after the Orlando Sentinel reported that the Sunshine State had been stockpiling a previously untested drug called etomidate.

Florida executed three people by lethal injection in 2017.

Texas

Thomas “Bart” Whitaker, 38, has been on death row for more than a decade for hiring a hitman to kill his family at their suburban Houston home in 2003. His mother, Patricia Whitaker, and younger brother, Kevin Whitaker were killed. His father, Kent Whitaker, was shot but survived.

In a stranger-than-fiction twist, Kent Whitaker has become his son’s most ardent advocate. After publicly forgiving Bart, Kent has been working with lawyers urging the state to spare his son’s life.

“I know they would not want Bart’s life taken for this. They would be horrified at what’s happening,” Whitaker told the Washington Post earlier this month. “This isn’t just a case of a dad who is ignoring the truth about his son. Believe me, I’m aware of what his choices have cost me.”

On Wednesday, in a rare move, the seven-person Texas Parole board unanimously recommended that Gov. Greg Abbott respect Kent Whitaker’s wishes and commute his son’s death sentence.

The Texas parole board has only made four clemency recommendations since 1982, according to the Associated Press. Two of those recommendations were overruled by the governor.

Abbott will make the final decision whether to accept the board’s recommendation or allow the execution to go ahead.

Texas is the only state in 2018 to carry out an execution so far. It has executed three inmates since the start of the year.

Cover image: (Left to right) Eric Scott Branch, Thomas “Bart” Whitaker, Doyle Lee Hamm