Milestones in Texas capital punishment
1819 — George Brown is first person executed in Texas, by hanging.
1863 — Chipita Rodriguez is first woman executed in Texas, by hanging.
1923 — Lee Nathan becomes the last of 394 people executed by hanging.
1924 — Charles Reynolds becomes first inmate to die in the electric chair in Huntsville as state takes over executions.
1963 — Joseph Johnson is the last of 361 Texas prisoners to die in the electric chair.
1972 — U.S. Supreme Court finds death penalty "cruel and unusual;" death sentences of 52 people in Texas are commuted to life in prison.
1976 — U.S. Supreme Court holds Georgia death penalty statute constitutional, setting stage for resumption of executions.
1977 — Texas adopts lethal injection method.
1982 — Texas inmate Charlie Brooks becomes first in U.S. to receive lethal injection.
1998 — Karla Tucker becomes first woman executed in Texas since Civil War.
2000 — Texas executes a record 40 prisoners in one year.
2013 — Texas schedules execution No. 500, Kimberly McCarthy.
Associated Press
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 at the time 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 one inmate about every three weeks.
Still, even as McCarthy prepares to die at the Huntsville Unit, it’s clear that Texas, too, has been affected by the debate over capital punishment. 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 well be on a slower track to execute its next 500 inmates.
“It’s a very fragile system” as attitudes change, said Mark White, who was Texas attorney general when Brooks was executed and then presided over 19 executions as governor from 1983 to 1987.
“There’s a big difference between fair and harsh. … I think you have (Texas) getting a reputation for being bloodthirsty, and that’s not good.”
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 following 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. Texas’ standing stems both from its size, with the nation’s second largest population, and its tradition of tough justice for killers.
“In another state you live with that for a long time,” said Willett, who became warden at the Huntsville Unit in 1998 and oversaw 89 executions. “Here in Texas, another one is coming a few days later and you’ve forgotten that one before.”
He’s right. Still awaiting punishment in Texas are 282 convicted murderers.
Some may be spared. Supreme Court rulings have now excluded mentally impaired people or those who were under 18 at the time of their crime. Legal battles continue over the lethal drugs used in the process, mental competence of inmates, professional competence of defense lawyers and sufficiency of evidence in light of DNA forensics technology.
Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who has presided over more than half of the state’s executions, said that the recent changes have helped make Texas’ system fairer. In addition to the new sentencing options, he signed bills to allow post-conviction DNA testing for inmates and establish minimum qualifications for court-appointed defense attorneys.
“I think our process works just fine,” Perry said last year during his unsuccessful presidential campaign. “You may not agree with them, but we believe in our form of justice. … We think it is clearly appropriate.”
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