Noticing Texas’s domination of the death penalty in 2007

Writing in the New York Times, Adam Liptak has this new article headlined “At 60% of Total, Texas Is Bucking Execution Trend.”  Here is how it starts:

This year’s death penalty bombshells — a de facto national moratorium, a state abolition and the smallest number of executions in more than a decade — have masked what may be the most significant and lasting development.  For the first time in the modern history of the death penalty, more than 60 percent of all American executions took place in Texas.

Over the past three decades, the proportion of executions nationwide performed in Texas has held relatively steady, averaging 37 percent.  Only once before, in 1986, has the state accounted for even a slight majority of the executions, and that was in a year with 18 executions nationwide.

But enthusiasm for executions outside of Texas has dropped sharply. Of the 42 executions in the last year, 26 were in Texas.  The remaining 16 were spread across nine other states, none of which executed more than three people.  Many legal experts say the trend will probably continue.

As the Liptak article notes, lower court lethal injection litigation in many states partially explains why Texas dominated in 2007, as I noted in this May post when Texas had conducted 13 of the first 15 executions for the year.   (Interestingly, as this execution list from DPIC details, from May through July, only 6 of 17 execution took place in Texas, but thereafter Texas had 7 of the last 10 executions before the Baze moratorium kicked in.)