That's the title of Matt Ford's post at the Atlantic. It's subtitled, "The Lone Star State carried out its fewest executions since 1996 this year." There is an infographic at the link.
On Tuesday night, the state of Texas executed Miguel Paredes by lethal injection for murdering a woman and her two children sixteen years ago. With no executions scheduled by the state department of criminal justice for November or December, Paredes' death marks the tenth and final execution for Texas this year—the fewest in almost two decades.
2014 wasn't anomalous either. Executions in Texas, the most prolific death-penalty state in the country, spiked after Congress restricted federal appeals in death-penalty cases with the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act in 1996. Since then, however, the death penalty has been in overall decline both in Texas and nationwide. Thirty people have been executed so far this year in the entire United States, whereas Texas alone executed 40 people at its peak in 2000.
Earlier coverage of th execution of Miguel Paredes begins at the link.
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