The Most Blood-Thirsty State In The Union

At a time when most states have either abolished the death penalty or cut back so severely that they almost never use it, there are a few states that still engage in this blood-thirsty practice. And among them, one state stands out far above the rest as the most blood-thirsty state in the Union. I am embarrassed to say that it is my own home state -- Texas.

In 1972, the United States Supreme Court declared the death penalty statutes that existed at that time to be unconstitutional. But sadly they did not rule the death penalty itself was unconstitutional -- just the way it was being imposed. There were no executions from 1972 through 1976, but many states rewrote their laws to comply with the court's decision and executions started again in 1977. In the approximately 35 years since resuming executions, Texas has executed more than 37% of all the people put to death in the entire United States. No other state even comes close.

Here are the top ten states in the number of executions since 1976, with their percentage of the total and their average per year:

1. Texas..........481 (37.26%) 13.7 per year
2. Virginia..........109 (8.44%) 3.1 per year
3. Oklahoma..........98 (7.59%) 2.8 per year
4. Florida..........73 (5.66%) 2.1 per year
5. Missouri..........68 (5.27%) 1.9 per year
6. Alabama..........55 (4.26%) 1.6 per year
7. Georgia..........52 (4.03%) 1.5 per year
8. Ohio..........47 (3.64%) 1.3 per year
9. North Carolina..........43 (3.33%) 1.2 per year
10. South Carolina..........43 (3.33%) 1.2 per year

As you can see, no other state comes close to Texas in the use of this barbaric penalty -- a penalty that reduces the state to the level of the criminal being executed. And while the number of death penalties both given and carried out in Texas has slightly slowed in the last few years, it still puts more people to death than any other state -- and will probably continue to do so, since there are currently 312 prisoners on death row in the state awaiting execution.

Making matters worse, we now know that at least one (and probably more) person executed was actually innocent -- Cameron Todd Willingham. And the current governor, Rick Perry, has done his best to cover that up (by firing the head of the Forensics Commission that was set to investigate it). Innocence is of no consequence to Governor Perry.

Don't get me wrong. I do believe that almost all of those on death row have committed heinous crimes -- crimes that should forever keep them from walking the streets among decent people ever again. But there is a big difference between keeping a dangerous person locked away from society, and taking the extreme step of killing them. Murder, even state-sanctioned murder, is just not something a civilized society should be engaged in.