By R.J. RICO, Associated Press

Thirty-four men have died by court-ordered executions in the U.S. so far this year, and eight others are scheduled to be put to death by year’s end, including five in the next eight days.

The total for 2025 already far exceeds the number of executions carried out last year — 25 — and could be the highest since 2012, when 43 inmates were put to death, though still far below the modern peak of 98 executions in 1999.

The increase in executions is largely being driven by four states — Florida, Texas, Alabama and South Carolina — that have carried out 76% of this year’s court-ordered killings.

“This is not an uptick of executions nationally — this is really down to just a few states,” said Robin Maher, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center.

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Chief among them is Florida, which has already carried out 13 executions after performing just one last year. The increase comes as President Donald Trump has urged governors to expand their use of the death penalty.

“Gov. DeSantis is scheduling all of these executions with complete autonomy and in complete secrecy,” Maher said.

DeSantis’ office has not responded to questions about why the governor is increasing the pace of executions now and whether Trump’s policies are playing a role.

Executions have been carried out this year in Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Indiana, Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee and Texas.

All but one of those states — Arizona — are run by Republican governors.

Here’s a look at the executions scheduled for the rest of the year, by state:

Indiana

Roy Lee Ward is set to die by lethal injection early Friday in the state’s third execution since resuming capital punishment last year.

Ward, 53, was convicted in the 2001 rape and murder of 15-year-old Stacy Payne.

Attorneys said Ward is remorseful and has exhausted his legal options after many court battles.

Missouri

Lance C. Shockley is scheduled to be executed on Tuesday.

Shockley, 48, was found guilty of first-degree murder in the death of Missouri State Highway Patrol Sgt. Carl Dewayne Graham outside his home in Carter County in 2005.

Authorities said Graham was killed because he was investigating Shockley for involuntary manslaughter and leaving the scene of an accident.

Florida

Samuel Lee Smithers is set to receive a lethal injection Tuesday evening.

Smithers, 72, was convicted of killing two women whose bodies were found in a rural pond in 1996. Authorities said he met his two victims — Christy Cowan and Denise Roach — on different dates at a Tampa motel to pay them for sex.

Norman Mearle Grim Jr., 65, is scheduled to be put to death on Oct. 28. He was convicted of raping and killing his neighbor Cynthia Campbell, whose body was found near the Pensacola Bay Bridge in 1998.

Smithers’ and Grim’s executions would be Florida’s 14th and 15th death sentences carried out in 2025, further extending the state’s record for executions in one year. Since the U.S. Supreme Court restored the death penalty in 1976, the state’s previous record was eight in 2014.

Mississippi

Charles Ray Crawford is scheduled to be executed Wednesday for kidnapping and killing a college student in 1993.

Crawford, 59, was sentenced to death for fatally stabbing 20-year-old community college student Kristy Ray after abducting her from her parents’ home in northern Mississippi’s Tippah County. Crawford told officers he had blacked out and did not recall killing her.

Texas

Robert Roberson had been scheduled to receive a lethal injection on Oct. 16, but his closely watched case was paused Thursday by Texas’ top criminal court.

Roberson, 58, had been set to become the first person in the U.S. put to death for a murder conviction tied to a diagnosis of shaken baby syndrome.

Prosecutors at Roberson’s 2003 trial argued that he hit his 2-year-old daughter Nikki Curtis and violently shook her, causing severe head trauma that led to her death.

But Roberson says he never abused the girl. A bipartisan group of Texas lawmakers believe Roberson is innocent and have sought to get him a new trial.

Roberson’s lawyers and some medical experts say his daughter died from complications related to pneumonia. They say his conviction was based on flawed and now outdated scientific evidence.

Arizona

Richard Kenneth Djerf is set to be executed Oct. 17 by lethal injection for killing four members of a family in their Phoenix home.

Djerf, 55, had pleaded guilty to four counts of murder in the 1993 killings of Albert Luna Sr., his wife Patricia, their 18-year-old daughter Rochelle and their 5-year-old son Damien.

Prosecutors say Djerf blamed another Luna family member for an earlier theft of home electronic items at his apartment and became obsessed with revenge.

Alabama

Anthony Todd Boyd is scheduled to be executed by nitrogen gas on Oct. 23.

A judge sentenced Boyd to death for his role in the 1993 killing of Gregory Huguley in Talladega. Prosecutors said Boyd taped Huguley’s feet together before another man doused him with gasoline and set him on fire over a $200 cocaine debt.

Boyd has long maintained his innocence, saying he never participated in the killing.

Tennessee

Harold Nichols is scheduled to be executed Dec. 11.

Nichols, 64, was convicted of rape and first-degree felony murder in the 1988 death of 21-year-old Karen Pulley in Hamilton County. Authorities said he broke into Pulley’s home, raped her and hit her in the head several times with a board.

Nichols had been scheduled to be killed in August 2020, but the execution was delayed because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

A man beat a woman repeatedly with a table leg in a random attack at a Green Line station in St. Paul, according to an attempted murder charge filed Thursday.

Officers responded to the Fairview and University avenues platform about 5:45 p.m. Tuesday and found a 31-year-old woman lying in a pool of blood. She was bleeding heavily from her head and face, and her glasses lay broken nearby.

Police found a large wooden table leg on a nearby platform walkway.

Witnesses reported the assailant had walked west on University Avenue, and police found Jerrod Rentist Johnson nearby at Lynnhurst and Oakley avenues. Johnson, 20, of Minneapolis, matched the suspect’s description and had blood on both his hands, according to the criminal complaint.

“Attacks on our riders are absolutely unacceptable and will not be tolerated,” Metro Transit Interim Police Chief Joe Dotseth said in a statement Thursday. “Those responsible will be held fully accountable.

“I am grateful for the swift response of our MTPD officers, who apprehended this individual within three minutes of this senseless attack, and to our investigative unit for ensuring he has been appropriately charged. Our thoughts are with everyone affected by this disturbing incident.”

Metro Transit police data indicates serious crimes are down 7 percent year-over-year.

Swung table leg like baseball bat

Surveillance video showed the woman exited a bus and headed toward the train platform. Johnson “picked up his pace to follow her,” caught up to the woman and “swung the table leg like a baseball bat hitting her head,” the complaint said.

She turned around “stunned and looked at Johnson,” the complaint continued. He “wielded the table leg over his head” and hit the woman’s shoulder. The woman screamed for help and ran onto the platform’s ramp.

Johnson caught the woman and struck her 21 more times with the table leg on her head, shoulder and arm, the complaint said. She’d been protecting herself with her right leg and arm, but lost consciousness. Johnson allegedly hit the woman for 17 seconds when she was unconscious.

Five to six male bystanders “eventually approached, but they did nothing to physically stop Johnson,” the complaint said. “Johnson leaned against a cement wall, slid down, and dropped the table leg while the bystanders surrounded him.” He then got up and walked away.

At the hospital, the woman told an officer she didn’t know the man who assaulted her. She said it appeared he “was upset that she was screaming as it was ruining the situation for him” and that she “saw joy” in his eyes when he beat her, according to the complaint.

The woman sustained a fractured skull. Staples were used to close injuries to her head in three places and she was diagnosed with a concussion. Her right arm was broken in multiple places from her shoulder to her hand, and will require surgery. One of her eyes was swollen completely shut.

Charged last month after alleged punch to woman

Johnson didn’t talk to police after his arrest.

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In addition to attempted murder, the Ramsey County Attorney’s Office charged Johnson with first-degree assault.

Johnson is due to make his first court appearance in the case on Friday. An attorney wasn’t listed for him as of Thursday.

On Sept. 14, Metro Transit police arrested Johnson after a woman reported that a man she didn’t know, identified as Johnson, punched her when she turned around. It happened near the Government Plaza light-rail station in downtown Minneapolis.

The Minneapolis City Attorney’s Office charged Johnson with fifth-degree assault, a misdemeanor, and the case is ongoing.

By Anna Claire Vollers, Stateline.org

One morning earlier this year, as Deb Capistrano came on duty for her shift as a nurse in her hospital’s stroke unit, her colleagues from the night shift warned her that one of her patients for the day was a man who’d been threatening to harm them.

Capistrano has been a registered nurse for 17 years. Threats of violence aren’t new to her. Across the nation, hospitals have become some of the most violent workplaces in America, where health care workers experience workplace violence at triple the rate of all other private industries combined, federal statistics show.

For Capistrano, the worry that she could be hurt while doing her job is always in the back of her mind.

But in California, where she works, robust state law requires hospitals to create detailed violence prevention plans specific to the needs of each hospital unit, with input from frontline workers like nurses.

When Capistrano arrived on duty, nursing management already had a plan to keep her safe. For example, every time Capistrano entered the patient’s room she had an escort, and hospital security did their rounds more frequently on her unit.

“In that moment, I felt really safe,” she told Stateline. “There were a lot of different things in place that day to prevent any harm. I think that’s largely due to having that law in place.”

Health care workers such as Capistrano make up just 10% of the American workforce but experience 48% of the nonfatal injuries from workplace violence, according to federal data.

And the threat is increasing. The number of health care providers who reported harassment at work from patients, patients’ families and colleagues more than doubled between 2018 and 2022, according to the latest data available from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Research has found workplace violence in health care is increasingly common due to a number of factors. Some are organizational: not enough staffing, long patient wait times or lack of appropriate security. Patients’ expectations about how fast or easy it should be to access care appear to have increased in recent years, as the costs of health care have gone up.

Researchers have also found that public attitudes are being shaped by politicians who might promote or undermine health services for political gain, particularly relating to contentious topics such as vaccination, masking or abortion.

With threats against nurses, physicians and other staff on the rise, state lawmakers and hospital officials are scrambling to put stronger protections in place. Those include increased criminal penalties, armed security guards and violence prevention plans.

This year, Ohio, Oregon and Washington enacted laws designed to curb workplace violence in health care spaces by requiring employers to create and carry out detailed violence prevention plans. Such plans can include risk assessments specific to each hospital unit, staff training on de-escalation techniques, increased security and a clear policy for reporting incidents.

Dozens of states — including California, Georgia, Illinois, Louisiana, Maine and Texas — have enacted laws aimed at curbing violence in hospitals and clinics, the vast majority of them in the past decade. Legislators in other states, including Alaska, Massachusetts, New York and Wyoming, introduced similar legislation in their most recent sessions.

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Prevention and punishment

A few years ago, during a shift in the emergency department at a hospital in Maine, nurse Meg Sinclair was tending to an older patient who became increasingly agitated. The patient grabbed both sides of her stethoscope and tried to strangle her.

Sinclair, who now works at Maine Medical Center in Portland, has been a nurse for 11 years. She’s spent most of that time in hospital emergency departments, where the potential for chaos never feels far away. A fellow nurse recently told her about getting her nose broken by a patient.

“It’s kind of crazy because nurses unfortunately normalize these horrific things that happen to them,” Sinclair told Stateline.

“You’re feeling scared in an environment where you shouldn’t have to, in your workplace where you’re trying to help people.”

In Maine, a 2023 law toughened the punishment for assaults that occur in a hospital emergency department.

To Sinclair, the law felt performative. She believes adding harsher penalties doesn’t do much to prevent assault from happening in the first place.

“It’s just not effective because it’s reactionary,” she said. “It’s frustrating, because the last thing I’d want to do is blame the patients. They’re often sick and scared, and not in their right mind.”

But proponents of such laws have said they’re needed to help law enforcement hold offenders accountable. Other states, such as Georgia, also have increased criminal penalties for assaults on nurses and other health care workers.

Maine Democratic state Rep. Holly Stover introduced a bill this year to extend her state’s harsher penalties to assaults on all health care workers, not just those working in the ER. She told Stateline that the penalties would only apply to people deemed competent to face such charges, not those unable to understand the consequences of their actions.

Her bill passed the House but was indefinitely postponed in the Senate in June. While Stover will leave office next year due to term limits, she hopes another lawmaker will reintroduce the bill.

“I’ve seen workers who have had broken cheekbones, broken noses, broken jaws,” said Stover, who has worked in health care and social services, and serves as a trustee for her local hospital.

“Any legislation that can better address the prevalence and potential for violence in health care settings is going to be critically important.”

Other states have focused on stepping up hospital security. A 2023 North Carolina law, for example, requires hospitals with emergency departments to have a law enforcement officer — not just unarmed security guards — on campus at all times.

But many hospitals have already gone down that road.

Hospital police forces

In September, WellSpan Health, a nine-hospital system in southern Pennsylvania, announced it would create its own private police force, adding armed officers to supplement its unarmed security team. The system will also be increasing its weapons detection equipment at hospital entrances.

WellSpan is in the same region of Pennsylvania where, in February, a gunman entered the intensive care unit at UPMC Memorial Hospital and took staff members hostage before he was killed by police. The shootout left one officer dead, and it wounded a doctor, a nurse, a hospital custodian and two other officers.

A growing number of hospitals are launching their own police forces, said Tony Pope, the chief of police and emergency preparedness at Columbus Regional Health in Columbus, Indiana, south of Indianapolis.

At least 29 states allow hospitals to create their own police forces, with officers who can carry firearms and make arrests, according to the International Association for Healthcare Security and Safety, a professional association for safety and security directors at health care facilities. Pope, who is president-elect of the association, said the levels of authority and jurisdiction for such officers can vary from state to state, but they’re able to carry firearms and make arrests.

At Indiana’s state police academy, health care is the fastest-growing contingent of police officers in the state, Pope said.

High-profile incidents nationwide have prompted more health systems to beef up their security. In 2023, a man opened fire in the waiting room of an Atlanta medical practice, leaving one woman dead and four others wounded. A few months later, a visitor at an Oregon hospital opened fire and killed a security guard, and a doctor was shot and injured at a Dallas-area medical center. The year before, a man killed his surgeon, another doctor, a receptionist and a visitor at a Tulsa, Oklahoma, medical office.

Workplace violence cost hospitals an estimated $18 billion in 2023 alone, according to a recent report from the American Hospital Association.

Pope said his force in Columbus has seen a 56% reduction in violent incidents since 2023.

And police forces aren’t just for the big systems anymore. Smaller hospitals, too, are testing the waters. In July, the 25-bed Perry County Memorial Hospital in southern Indiana announced it would begin hiring officers for its new police force this fall.

Scrubs and security

Sinclair often talks with other nurses about their workplace needs as a member of her local nurses union. She believes the best action state legislators could take to combat violence in health care is to require hospitals and other clinics to maintain certain nurse-to-patient ratios and penalize employers that exceed them.

“When we’re short-staffed and someone’s begging for help and you can’t get to them because you’re running between eight different rooms putting out fire after fire, then you get the verbal assault, the hair pulling,” said Sinclair, who said she’s experienced all of those things.

“You have to meet people’s needs or else they resort to things they otherwise wouldn’t do.”

Nursing groups have for years requested nurse-to-patient ratios. Only a handful of states, including California, have passed such laws.

Hospital systems and other employers argue ratios don’t give them needed flexibility in hiring, and could threaten the financial safety of some institutions that might be forced to close units if they can’t meet the ratios.

Pope said that in his experience, hospitals and other health employers likely need several different laws and policies in place, from prevention plans to added security measures.

“When it comes to addressing workplace violence, it really is important for health care facilities and systems to have that multipronged approach,” he said.

Stateline reporter Anna Claire Vollers can be reached at avollers@stateline.org.

©2025 States Newsroom. Visit at stateline.org. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

WASHINGTON — Heather Campbell lost her job working for a food bank over the summer because of federal funding cuts. Her husband serves as an officer in the Air Force, but now he’s facing the prospect of missing his next paycheck because of the government shutdown.

If lawmakers in Washington don’t step in, Campbell’s husband won’t get paid on Wednesday. Because the couple lacks the savings to cover all their expenses, they expect to survive on credit cards to pay the mortgage and feed their three children, racking up debt as the political stalemate drags on.

“You’re asking us to put our lives on the line or the people we love to put their lives on the line,” said Campbell, 39, who lives outside Montgomery, Alabama, near Maxwell Air Force Base. “And you’re not even going to give us our paycheck. What? There is a lot of broken trust there.”

The nation’s third shutdown in 12 years is once again raising anxiety levels among service members and their families because those in uniform are working without pay. While they would receive back pay once the impasse ends, many military families live paycheck to paycheck. During previous shutdowns, Congress passed legislation to ensure that troops kept earning their salaries, but time is running out before they miss their first paycheck in less than a week.

“There are so many things that Congress can’t agree on right now,” said Kate Horrell, the wife of a Navy veteran whose Washington, D.C., company provides financial advice to military families. “I don’t want to assume that they’re going to be able to agree on this.”

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth reviews troops during the POW/MIA National Recognition Day Ceremony at the Pentagon, Friday, Sept. 19, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)

Paying the troops has support, but it’s unclear when a deal might pass

When asked if he would support a bill to pay the troops, President Donald Trump said, “that probably will happen.”

“We’ll take care of it,” Trump said Wednesday. “Our military is always going to be taken care of.”

Rep. Jen Kiggans, a Virginia Republican and former Navy helicopter pilot, has introduced a measure to maintain military and Coast Guard salaries, and it has bipartisan co-sponsors.

The House is closed for business until next week, leaving two days to take action before Wednesday’s payday.

Amanda Scott, whose husband is an Air Force officer in Colorado, said the uncertainty goes beyond the stress of just getting by — it chips away at the military’s ability to retain the best people and their readiness to fight.

“How ready and lethal are you if you don’t know if you can feed your family?” said Scott, 33, of Colorado Springs, who works for a defense contractor and volunteers as an advocate for military families. “A lot of these service members are highly skilled and can go out and make much more money in the civilian sector.”

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth speaks during the POW/MIA National Recognition Day Ceremony at the Pentagon, Friday, Sept. 19, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)

Aid is available for service members, but it’s not enough for some families

Support is available for military families through nonprofits and charities. For example, some financial institutions are offering zero-interest loans, while each military branch has a relief organization.

But Campbell said she and her husband in Alabama can’t apply for a payday loan because they’re refinancing their house. They lack a substantial emergency fund because they were paying off student loans and moved several times in the last few years to military posts. It was often challenging for her to find steady work and child care.

“The opportunity to build up savings is really difficult on just one income,” Campbell said. “I don’t know many military families that have a month’s worth of income set aside just in case, let alone multiple months’ worth.”

Jen Cluff, whose husband recently left the Air Force, said her family was on a food aid program during the 2019 shutdown. But even the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children, also known as WIC, which helps more than 6 million low-income mothers and young children, would run out of federal money within two weeks unless the shutdown ends, experts say.

“We made so little and had three young children,” said Cluff, 42, of San Antonio. “We were definitely a family that had very little buffer.”

If Congress had not passed legislation to pay troops during the last shutdown, missing more than two paychecks “would have been catastrophic for us,” she said.

“Resentment can grow quickly,” Cluff said of the shutdown, adding that “the general public, and many in government, truly don’t understand the daily sacrifices our military members and their families make for our country.”

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Wider effects feared in military-heavy areas

The economic impact will ripple through regions with large military footprints, like coastal Virginia, home to the nation’s largest Navy base and several other installations. The area’s 88,000 active duty service members and their families likely have pulled back significantly on spending, said Rick Dwyer, executive director of the Hampton Roads Military and Federal Facilities Alliance, an advocacy group.

“Think about service members who are deployed right now around the world,” said Dwyer, who served in the Air Force during previous shutdowns. “They’re having to wonder if their families are going to be able to pay the rent, the child care bills, the car payments.”

A shutdown contingency plan posted on the Pentagon’s website cites the use of funds to continue military operations from Trump’s big tax and spending cut bill. The Congressional Budget Office has said money appropriated to the Defense Department under the new law could be used to pay active duty personnel.

It was not clear if the funding would be used for that. The Pentagon said Thursday that it could not provide information “at this time.”

Its contingency plan says it will “continue to defend the nation and conduct ongoing military operations” as well as activities “necessary for the safety of human life and the protection of property.”

Listed among the highest priorities are securing the U.S.-Mexico border, operations in the Middle East and the future Golden Dome missile defense program. The plan also noted that “child care activities required for readiness” would continue.

Raleigh Smith Duttweiler, chief impact officer for the National Military Family Association, said most child development centers on military bases are still operating. But she said most service members pay for child care off base.

“Last I checked, my kids’ babysitter doesn’t take an IOU from the federal government,” said Duttweiler, whose husband is a Marine.

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