There have been five executions apiece this year in Texas, Alabama and South Carolina. Florida leads the nation with 18.
Kristin Houle Cuellar is executive director of the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, which compiled the statistics for its latest annual report. She said Texas' numbers speak to both a declining use of capital punishment by Texas counties and an accelerating use by other states, Florida in particular.
"In Texas, executions are set at the county level by a trial court judge at the request of the elected district attorney," Cuellar said. "In Florida, executions are set by the governor [Ron DeSantis], and he has decided to exercise his power in this very extreme way, leading to a huge ramp-up in executions there."
The last execution of the year in the United States is scheduled to take place in Florida this Thursday, Dec. 18. It’s set to be the 19th execution of the year in that state.
Texas led the nation for years in terms of executions carried out. Last year, however, Texas fell to second place behind Alabama.
Cuellar noted the trend in Texas extends to new death sentences being handed down at the county level.
"This year," Cuellar said, "we saw that Texas judges set the fewest execution dates in at least three decades."
Harris County, the state's largest, proved an outlier in terms of the number of new death sentences handed down. Harris County juries sentenced two people to death this year, marking the first time in more than a decade that the county had sentenced more than one person to die.
Xavier Davis was sentenced to death in April for the 2021 triple murder of 35-year-old Gregory Carhee, 29-year-old Donyavia Lagway and their daughter, 6-year-old Harmony Carhee. Then in June, Oscar Rosales was issued the death penalty for killing Harris County Precinct 5 Cpl. Charles Galloway during a traffic stop in 2022.
The county that includes Houston has also set the first execution date in Texas for next year. Charles Victor Thompson, convicted in 1999 for a double murder committed the year before, is scheduled to be executed Jan. 28.
"Harris County does still lead all counties and almost all other states in this number of executions," Cuellar said.
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