Pace for executing convicted killers steady in Texas
HUNTSVILLE,Texas — Jim Willett remembers the night of Dec. 6, 1982, when he was assigned to guard a mortuary van that had arrived at the death house at the Huntsville prison.
“I remember thinking: We’re really going to do this. This is really going to happen,” said Willett, who was a captain for the Texas Department of Corrections.
When the van pulled away early the next morning, it carried to a nearby funeral home the body of convicted killer Charlie Brooks, who had just become the first Texas prisoner executed since a Supreme Court ruling six years earlier allowed the death penalty to resume in the United States.
What was unusual then has become rote. Today, barring a reprieve, Kimberly McCarthy will become the 500th convicted killer in Texas to receive a lethal injection.
The number far outpaces the execution total in any other state. But it also reflects the reality of capital punishment in the United States today: While some states have halted the practice in recent years because of concern about wrongful convictions, executions continue at a steady pace in many others.
The death penalty is on the books in 32 states. On average, Texas executes an inmate about every three weeks.
As McCarthy prepares to die at the Huntsville Unit, it’s clear that the capital punishment debate has affected Texas. In recent years, state lawmakers have provided more sentencing options for juries, and courts have narrowed the cases in which the death penalty can be applied. In guaranteeing DNA testing for inmates and providing for sentences of life without parole, Texas could be on a slower track to execute its next 500 inmates.
Texas has accounted for nearly 40 percent of the more than 1,300 executions carried out since murderer Gary Gilmore went before a Utah firing squad in 1977 and became the first U.S. inmate executed after the Supreme Court’s clarification of death penalty laws. Texas had more than 300 executions before the pause. Virginia is a distant second, nearly 400 executions behind.