Lists of people executed in Texas

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Huntsville Unit, the location of the State of Texas execution chamber

The list of people executed by the U.S. state of Texas, with the exception of 1819-1849, is divided into periods of ten years.

Since 1819, 1,301 individuals have been executed in Texas as of May 17,2016.

Between 1819 and 1923, 390 people were executed by hanging in the county where the trial took place.[1] During the American Civil War, three Confederate deserters and a man convicted of attempted rape were executed by firing squad.[1] The law was changed in 1923 requiring executions to be carried out in the electric chair at the Huntsville Unit in Huntsville, Texas. From 1924 to 1964, 361 people were executed in this way.[2] After an eighteen-year gap following Furman v. Georgia, executions were resumed following new capital punishment laws passed by the State of Texas (and upheld in Gregg v. Georgia, which also included a companion case from Texas), among them changing the method of execution to lethal injection.

Since 1982 and as of April 6, 2016, 537 individuals (all of whom were convicted of murder) have been executed by lethal injection at the Huntsville Unit.[3] The number is over four times as many as Oklahoma[4] (the state with the second-highest total of executions in the post-Gregg era) and over 37 times as many as California (the state with the largest number of death row inmates;[5] California has not executed anyone since January 2006).

Executions from 1819

See also

References

  1. 1.0 1.1 The Espy File: 1608–2002. Death Penalty Information Center. Retrieved 31 March 2010.
  2. List of Electrocuted Offenders. Texas Department of Criminal Justice. Retrieved 31 March 2010.
  3. List of Executed Offenders. Texas Department of Criminal Justice. Retrieved 07 August 2012.
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Further reading

  • Harnsberger, R. Scott. A Guide to Sources of Texas Criminal Justice Statistics [North Texas Crime and Criminal Justice Series, no.6]. Denton: University of North Texas Press, 2011. ISBN 978-1-57441-308-3

External links