A hot August for the Texas death chamber

As TalkLeft notes here, Texas has executed defendants each of the last two days and has another execution scheduled for tonight.  StandDown Texas has more here on last night’s execution, and also spotlights this New York Times piece which explains why tonight’s scheduled execution of Kenneth Foster is garnering particular attention.

With its many executions in August, Texas now has been responsible for nearly 2/3 of all executions in the US in 2007.  (DPIC has the stats here.)  Of course, Texas has long been a  national leader in the application of the death penalty, but lethal injection litigation and other forces have now resulted in Texas having an even larger role in the modern American story of capital punishment.  Indeed, there may be a record low number of executions this year in states other than Texas, but Texas may kill enough defendants to cause national statistics to show an increase in total US executions in 2007.