■ The death penalty was administered 23 times this year, a comparatively low number.

HUNTSVILLE, Texas — A court reprieve that halted the scheduled December lethal injection of a Texas prisoner means 2017 will end with 23 inmates executed in the U.S., a figure that although up slightly from the previous year is half of what it was a decade ago.

The year-end numbers also show that Texas will regain its standing as the nation’s most active state in carrying out capital punishment.

Texas inmate Juan Castillo, who had an August death date postponed because of Hurricane Harvey, was set for lethal injection Dec. 14 for a December 2003 robbery and fatal shooting in San Antonio. However, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, the state’s highest criminal court, this past week sent the 36-year-old Castillo’s appeal back to his trial court to review arguments from defense attorneys that a witness presented false testimony at Castillo’s 2005 trial.

Castillo’s was the last execution scheduled for 2017 in the 31 states that impose the death penalty, according to statistics kept by the Death Penalty Information Center, a Washington-based group that opposes capital punishment.

Texas put to death seven prisoners this year, matching the state total from 2016. Arkansas carried out four executions, followed by Alabama and Florida with three each, and Ohio and Virginia with two each. Georgia, which topped the nation in 2016 with nine, executed one prisoner this year, as did Missouri.

Oklahoma, which typically has one of the busiest execution chambers in the country, went another year without putting any inmates to death as the state struggles with implementing a new execution protocol.

As recently as 2010, the national total was 46, but it has been declining steadily.