Death row inmates in five states are scheduled to be put to death in the span of one week, an unusually high number of executions that defies a yearslong trend of decline in both the use and support of the death penalty in the U.S.

The first execution was carried out on Friday in South Carolina. Two more death row inmates, in Missouri and Texas, were pronounced dead Tuesday evening following executions. If the two remaining scheduled executions, in Alabama and Oklahoma, are carried out this week, it will mark the first time in more than 20 years — since July 2003 — that five were held in seven days, according to the nonprofit Death Penalty Information Center, which takes no position on capital punishment but has criticized the way states carry out executions.

If this week’s remaining executions are completed, the United States will have reached 1,600 executions since the death penalty was reinstated by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1976, said Robin Maher, the center’s executive director.