Two inmates have been executed an hour apart during what's expected to be the single busiest month for the death penalty in the U.S. in nearly 15 years.
Florida executed Samuel Lee Smithers on Tuesday, Oct. 14, for murdering two Tampa women in 1996. Smithers, who was pronounced dead at 6:15 p.m. ET, became the 14th inmate executed in the state this year, a record.
About an hour later, Missouri executed Lance Shockley for the murder of a Missouri state trooper in 2005. He was pronounced dead at 7:13 p.m. ET., the Associated Press reported.
Smithers' and Shockley's executions are among seven this October − four of them this week alone. If they all move forward, it will be the single busiest month for executions in the U.S. since May 2011, according to a USA TODAY analysis of a database kept by the Death Penalty Information Center, a nonprofit that tracks the use of the death penalty in the U.S. without taking a position on it.
The busy October comes amid an overall rise in executions in 2025 and an expansion of the execution methods used as experts attribute the increase to the political climate under President Donald Trump. So far this year, states have executed 37 inmates − a figure that hasn't been seen since 2014.
