In 1982, Texas was the first in the world to execute an inmate by lethal injection, its first execution since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976. The state became the top U.S. executioner and is among the top three in imposing death sentences. In 2000, the population on Texas’ death row reached a record high of 459 inmates and officials carried out 40 executions, the most in a single year. Decades later, the state’s interest in capital punishment appears to have cooled, influenced by cultural shifts, legal updates and what some experts call “evolving standards of decency," the Texas Tribune reports. In 2022, the death row population dropped to under 200 for the first time in almost three decades, and by the start of 2025, there were 174 people on death row. Still, Texas has executed more people than the next four states combined since 1982, a trend largely upheld by a few urban counties, three of which are responsible for more than 40% of the state’s executions.
“The death penalty is no longer an American story, it's really a local story,” said Robin Maher of the Death Penalty Information Center. “It's about which local jurisdictions are using it, and those decisions that are being made by their local elected officials.” Five men were executed by Texas in 2024, the sixth year in a row in which there were fewer than 10 executions. A little more than half of those sentenced to death in Texas — almost 600 of more than 1,100 inmates — have been executed since 1977. Since 2020, almost as many people on death row have had their sentences reduced or convictions overturned as those executed, with 24 executions and 22 sentence reductions, most due to intellectual disability. Nine men also have died on death row before their execution date since 2020. The slowdown in death sentences is due to a buildup of legal and social factors, said Kristin Houlé Cuellar of the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, a grassroots advocacy group whose focus is on death penalty education and abolition. One of the most significant reasons for the decline was the state adopted life sentences without parole as an option to capital punishment in 2005. Texas was the last state with the death penalty to do so.
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