That's the title of a Texas Tribune post written by Brandi Grissom and Ryan Murphy. The article is accompanied by charts.
Thirty-five years ago today, the state of Utah executed Gary Gilmore by firing squad and restarted the death penalty in the United States. Texas followed suit, reinstating capital punishment in 1982 and quickly becoming home to the nation's busiest execution chamber.
A 1972 U.S. Supreme Court opinion that the states' use of the death penalty was arbitrary and capricious led to a de facto moratorium on the penalty across the nation. States began changing their death penalty laws, and the pause on executions ended with a subsequent high court decision in 1976.
The first post-moratorium execution in Texas was in 1982. Charles Brooks Jr. was executed for the 1976 shooting death of a mechanic. Since 1982, Texas has executed 477 men and women, more than any other state. And there are more than 300 men and women in Texas awaiting execution now.
And:
In the first graph, we have charted both the frequency of executions and the racial makeup of the executed. The graph is broken into five-year segments starting in 1980 and going through 2011. An interesting trend that becomes visible in this graph is the growing number of Hispanic inmates who are executed. Although the number of executions of black inmates has declined, the number for Hispanic criminals has risen. In 2010 and 2011, more Hispanic criminals were executed than black criminals. The first person set to be executed in 2012 is a Hispanic inmate, Rodrigo Hernandez, from Bexar County.
Despite that trend, the number of black inmates on death row continues to exceed any other, as the graph below illustrates.
According to TDCJ, six exeuctions have been scheduled by Texas district courts for 2012. The first is January 26. More on the 1972 case of Furman v. Georgia, in which the Supreme Court ruled existing death penalty laws unconstitutional - as well as the 1976 case of Gregg v. Georgia, via Oyez.
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