"Woman will be 500th execution since Texas resumed death penalty," is Allan Turner's report for the Houston Chronicle. Here's the beginning:
The illuminated clock set in red-brick facade of the Walls Unit may be the most dreaded timepiece in Texas. Minute by minute, it ticks away dreary years behind bars. On some days - 15 times last year, 40 times in 2000 - its black hands signal another criminal justice milestone.
Six o'clock, the hands say. Another killer will be dead and gone.
Barring a last-minute stay, Kimberly McCarthy on June 26 will become the 500th Texas killer to be executed since the state re-activated the death penalty in 1976. Texas leads the nation's 33 death penalty states in executions, killing more than the next five most active states combined.
Virginia, with 110 executions, places second.
Minutes before the killing hour, McCarthy, 52, condemned for the 1997 murder-robbery of a 70-year-old Dallas County woman, will be strapped to a gurney in a room deep within the 164-year-old prison. Then, as a warden and chaplain stand silently nearby, she will be injected with a lethal dose of a drug commonly used to euthanize cats and dogs.
McCarthy, a one-time occupational therapist and home health care worker, will be the fourth woman in Texas executed by injection.
Related posts are in the execution date and execution category indexes.
Earlier coverage of Kimberly McCarthy's case begins at the link.
Comments