Texas is set to thin out its death row before the week is over. Since mid-October Texas has executed eight inmates,
with another two scheduled for execution by the end of this week.
That's a total of ten executions in a little over thirty days, a new record
even for the country's most active death penalty state.

The high
rates of Texas executions seen in October and November are a result of
the logjam created when the U.S. Supreme Court effectively halted
lethal injections around the country while it decided whether the
killing method was unconstitutionally inhumane earlier this year. The
Supreme Court's 7-2 decision last April held that injection was not
unconstitutionally cruel and allowed executions to resume. Since then 17 executions have been carried out in Texas alone this year, the most in the nation.

Texas leads the nation by far in number of executions overall. According to the Death Penalty Information Center,
since the U.S Supreme Court ruling in 1976 that allowed executions to
resume after a four-year period during which they were considered
unconstitutional, there have been 1132 executions in the United States,
one of the highest numbers anywhere in the world. Texas has performed
422 of those executions, almost 40 percent of the national total. By
comparison, Virginia, the second largest executioner, has conducted 102
since 1976.

A Southern phenomenon

There
have been 33 executions so far this year, and except for the two
executions that took place in Oklahoma, and the one that took place
today in Ohio, all of the executions have been in the South (including
17 in Texas, 4 in Virginia, 3 in Georgia, 2 in Florida, 2 in South
Carolina, and 2 in Mississippi). At least 12 cases have been granted
stays of executions in the past two months, including Troy Davis, whose
execution in Georgia was halted by the U.S. Supreme Court.
The South, plus Oklahoma, has performed 80 percent of all executions
since 1977, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. Texas
and Virginia alone account for 45 percent of all executions.

Executions
are a Southern phenomenon and they definitely have a racialized
component. Sixty-six percent of all people on Texas's Death Row are
non-white. Out of all the executions in Texas since 1982, no white
person has ever been executed solely for the murder of an
African-American.

Despite the high numbers of executions this
year (which will total out at about 19), 2008 overall is not a record
year for executions in Texas. When George W. Bush was governor, Texas
executed an average of 25 convicts a year, culminating in 40 executions
in 2000, reports the Associated Press. Since then, the state has averaged about two dozen a year.

Amnesty International has called
the spate of executions during this historic election month a 'chilling
reminder' of human rights failings of how much the country has to do to
improve its human rights record. On top of the three executions that
have already taken place in Texas this November, just this week a judge
declined to grant an injunction that would have stopped Kentucky's
first execution in nearly 10 years. That execution is scheduled for this Friday.

Executions by Region
South: 933
Midwest: 128
West: 67
Northeast: 4
Texas & Virginia: 524
(Source: Death Penalty Information Center)