Tennessee put 66-year-old Anthony Darrell Hines to death by lethal injection Thursday for the 1985 stabbing murder of Catherine Jean Jenkins, carrying out justice more than four decades after the crime.
Hines was pronounced dead at 10:43 a.m. at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville, FOX 17 News reported. The execution came less than three months after the state's last attempt, the lethal injection of death row inmate Tony Carruthers, was called off when the execution team spent more than an hour trying to establish backup IV access and failed.
This time, the state completed the procedure. Curtains opened to witnesses at roughly 10:30 a.m. Hines lay on the gurney, his hands covered, one arm bent from a prior stroke. At about 10:34 a.m. he let out a loud groan, and discoloration appeared on his face. Nine minutes later, he was dead.
Catherine Jean Jenkins was 54 years old when she was killed in March 1985 while working at a motel in Kingston Springs, a small town west of Nashville. She left behind a husband and four children. Her daughter Melissa was 22 at the time.
Dennis Jenkins, Catherine's son, addressed reporters after the execution and did not hold back about the man who took his mother's life. He told media that Hines stabbed his mother 13 times and sexually assaulted her with the knife.
"Yes, I hope he did suffer because what he did to my mother is nothing to what he just went through."
Melissa Jenkins spoke more quietly but with equal finality. She described her mother as "a devoted mother, wife, homemaker and woman of faith."
"We will always mourn the wonderful person our mother was... This day brings justice. After so many years, we're finally able to close this chapter of our lives."
For the Jenkins family, that chapter stretched across more than four decades, decades during which Hines sat on death row while the legal system ground forward at its own pace. The family's wait for accountability is a reminder of what capital punishment's critics rarely address: the toll that open-ended delay inflicts on the people left behind by violent crime.
Katherine Dix, Hines' attorney, released a written statement after the execution that framed the lethal injection in starkly different terms. She opened by expressing grief for the Jenkins family, then pivoted sharply.
"I also grieve the violence the State of Tennessee inflicted on us all today. On Darrell, of course, who was poisoned to death, just moments ago. On those of us required by our jobs to stand passively and watch Darrell be murdered. On the prison guards and officials whose jobs require them to participate. On Darrell's son, who met Darrell four days ago for the first time and watched him die this morning. What we witnessed here today is not normal, and I urge us all to not become numb or indifferent to the cruelty."
Dix described Hines as blind, paralyzed on his left side, unable to walk, and in constant pain following strokes in December 2025 and January 2026. She argued before the execution that his medical condition and unresolved questions about the state's execution team raised the risk of complications, the same kind that derailed the Carruthers execution on May 21.
Dix also offered a personal portrait of Hines, calling him a "masterful storyteller" who loved fantasy books and "lived by a code." She attributed his path to a childhood of poverty and abuse, though those claims were not independently verified by any official record cited in the reporting.
"The leaders of this state repeatedly invoke the sanctity of life, but today the State put to death a man who was blind and paralyzed on his left side, could not walk, and was in constant pain. They lifted his body onto a gurney and wheeled him to the death chamber. May God have mercy on us all."
Governor Bill Lee denied clemency for Hines the Tuesday before the execution. The specific legal challenges Hines' attorneys filed to stop the procedure were referenced but not detailed in available reporting, and the court rulings that cleared the way for the execution to proceed were not reproduced.
Hines was not the only inmate put to death Thursday. His execution in Tennessee was one of three carried out across the country the same day, the first time three U.S. executions occurred on a single day since January 7, 2010, AP News reported.
In Oklahoma, Carlos Cuesta-Rodriguez was executed for killing his common-law wife, Olimpia Fisher. In his final statement, Cuesta-Rodriguez acknowledged his guilt plainly: "You must believe that I deserve to suffer. And you're right. It's time for me to pay for what I did."
In Alabama, 42-year-old Jeremy Williams was put to death for the rape and murder of five-year-old Kamarie Holland, who had been trafficked by her own mother. Williams made the child smoke methamphetamine before assaulting and strangling her. He pleaded guilty, instructed his attorneys not to appeal, and was executed just five years after his crimes, unusually fast given typical death row timelines, Fox News reported.
Alabama Governor Kay Ivey issued a pointed statement: "The unspeakable nature of this crime is exactly why we have the death penalty statute." Russell County District Attorney Richard Chancey, responding to Williams' final words about dying in peace, said simply: "That baby didn't die in peace."
The triple execution reflects a broader uptick in capital punishment nationally. So far in 2025, 22 executions have been carried out, with 11 states executing 47 people total, the highest number since 2009. Florida recently carried out a rare double execution, putting to death its oldest death row inmate and an ex-cop who killed a child.
Inside the death chamber at Riverbend, Hines declined to give a final statement. FOX 17 reporter Karen Aguilar, who served as a media witness, reported that Hines' speech was impaired and witnesses "could not translate exactly what he was saying." An unnamed spiritual advisor stood beside him and repeated the phrase "You're a beautiful child of God" multiple times throughout the procedure.
Hines' son, whose name was not released, was present. Aguilar described him as "visibly upset." Dix's statement noted the son had met his father for the first time just four days before the execution.
The legal battles surrounding lethal injection continue to generate controversy. The Supreme Court recently blocked Alabama from executing an inmate by nitrogen gas, and death penalty opponents have increasingly focused on execution methods and medical complications as grounds for challenge. Tennessee's own failed attempt with Carruthers in May gave those arguments fresh material.
But the state moved forward with Hines' execution regardless, and it proceeded to completion without the IV complications that had halted the Carruthers procedure. Whatever questions remain about the execution team's protocols, the outcome Thursday was unambiguous.
Capital punishment cases often draw attention to the condemned. Advocates highlight childhood trauma, medical frailty, and the conditions of confinement. Those details are real, and Dix's account of Hines' physical deterioration, blind, paralyzed, in constant pain, painted a grim picture of the man on the gurney.
But Dennis and Melissa Jenkins offered a different focal point: a 54-year-old woman who went to work at a motel one morning in 1985 and never came home. A mother of four. A woman of faith. A victim whose family spent more than 40 years waiting for the justice system to finish what a jury decided decades ago.
The pursuit of the death penalty in high-profile murder cases remains a live issue across the country. And as recent sentencing outcomes show, including the life sentences handed down in other brutal killings, the question of what justice demands for the worst crimes is far from settled.
For the Jenkins family, Thursday settled it. Four decades is a long time to wait for a sentence to mean what it says.