(Houston) A man sentenced to death for the 2013 murder of his partner and her son was executed Wednesday in Texas.
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Cedric Ricks, 51, received a lethal injection that evening at the Huntsville State Penitentiary. This is the sixth execution in the country since the start of the year.
He was found guilty of stabbing to death his partner Roxann Sanchez, 30, and one of his sons, aged 8 and born from a previous union.
The latter’s brother, aged 12, had survived around twenty stabbings, pretending to have been killed, and had testified against the accused at his trial.
Six executions have already been carried out in the United States since the start of the year, all by lethal injection, including three in Florida, one in Oklahoma and two in Texas.
In total, 47 executions took place in the United States in 2025, compared to around twenty per year for the past decade, the highest level since the 52 recorded in 2009.
The vast majority were carried out by lethal injection, i.e. 39 in 2025.
Five others were killed last year by nitrogen inhalation, a method used for the first time in the world by Alabama (south) in 2024 and compared by UN experts to a form of “torture”, and three by firing squad in South Carolina, for the first time in the United States since 2010.
The death penalty has been abolished in 23 of the 50 American states. Three others, California, Oregon and Pennsylvania, observe a moratorium on executions by decision of the governor.
