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Two more executions in two states not debating the death penalty

By Douglas Berman

Though the fate of the death penalty continues to be debate in many states, tonight Texas and Georgia got on with the business of carrying out executions.  Here are details from this AP report:

A man convicted of a double slaying was executed on Tuesday in Texas and another man was executed in Georgia for stabbing to death a neighbor who had spurned his sexual advances.

In Texas, James Edward Martinez, 34, was executed at the state prison in Huntsville on Tuesday for the 2000 fatal shootings of Sandra Walton, 29, whom he dated briefly, and Michael Humphreys, 19, a friend of the woman, outside her Fort Worth apartment complex….

In Georgia, Robert Newland, 65, was put to death by lethal injection at the state prison at Jackson. He was the first person executed in Georgia this year. Newland was convicted in 1987 and sentenced to death for the slaying of Carol Sanders Beatty, a 27-year-old former state and national amateur diving champion.

I wonder if those Justices who have recently expressed concern with long stays on death row (details here) are somewhat disappointed that Georgia needed nearly two decades to complete Newland’s sentence, but then are somewhat gratified that Texas managed to carry out Martinez’s death sentence less than a decade after his crime.

If Texas goes forward with another execution it has scheduled for Wednesday, there will have been a total of 20 executions in the US in 2009 before we have even reached the Ides of March.  At this pace, the first year of the Obama Administration could have, ironically, more total executions in the United States than any of the years of George Bush’s presidency.

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