According to FMX’s latest dose of cheery civic pride, Texas leads the nation in executions by a lot. Since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976, the state has executed nearly 600 people — about one-third of all executions in the entire United States. That’s not just leading the pack; that’s lapping it while waving.
In Texas, there’s only one crime that earns a death sentence: capital murder. And once a jury delivers that verdict, the state doesn’t exactly hesitate. While the rest of the country has collectively carried out about 1,650 executions over the same period, Texas alone accounts for roughly 596 of them. Oklahoma, Florida, Virginia, and Missouri trail far behind, presumably wondering how Texas turned state-sanctioned death into a competitive sport.
Death row itself is neatly organized, as you’d expect from a state that prides itself on efficiency. Men wait at the Polunsky Unit in Livingston, women at the O’Daniel Unit in Gatesville, and executions are carried out at the Huntsville Unit — Texas’ oldest prison, because of course tradition matters here. Over the decades, the state has upgraded its methods too: hanging gave way to the electric chair, which gave way to lethal injection, which was later streamlined to a single-drug dose. Progress!
And all of this sits comfortably alongside Texas’ favorite political slogan: pro-life. Just don’t ask too many follow-up questions about when that philosophy applies, who qualifies, or why it seems to expire somewhere between conviction and Huntsville.
Pro-life from conception to conviction — everything after that is just paperwork, right?