Texas Kills Prisoners Like It's A Job
I grew up in Texas, and my parents still live there, so I still go pretty often and it's not as bad as you think. Houston's become a pretty fun town -- there are plenty of bars, and it's possible to make out with even the most elite of hipster girls on the mention of being from, say, New York, which is where I happen to live. It's not all fun and games down in the Lone Star state, though. Texas, it turns out, killed more than half the prisoners executed in the whole country combined, (60 percent!) this year according to theNew York Times. Hooray Texas!
The Times points out that Texas doesn't condemn more people to death on average than any other state with capital punishment given its murder rate. The difference is that when another state sentences someone to death, that person may never actually be executed, or will sit on death row for decades before being killed. In Texas, they will kill you, like, tomorrow if they can and if tomorrow is already full, they'll kill you the day after.
This is due largely to the fact that the district attorneys set the execution dates, as well as and some other crazy quirks in the justice system designed by people who love to kill. So much so that, for a long time, the crime lab in Harris County -- the county that contains Houston and where most death sentences come from -- had a real problem with, you know, maintaining its evidence (oops, still does !). In Illinois, they emptied out death row upon a similar but far less over-the-top revelation; in Texas, they keep on cranking them out (the police chief in charge at the time is running for DA). This is one of the only things the state government does efficiently. Oh that and create the kind of people that vote for George W. Bush four fucking times.
So with the tide turning on this death penalty thing, there will probably come a time where 100% of the country's executions are in Texas. After giving the world so many wonderful things like Dallas , oil , George W. Bush and, come to think of it, Ron Paul, Texas is American's death penalty defender. The state will continue executing people until you East Coast Liberals invade this place and even then Texas will continue executing people, God damn it. "Lone Star" doesn't just mean cheap beer, comprende?
US Disparity in Executions Grows as Texas Bucks Trend [New York Times]