Texecutions resume tonight

Texas will resume executions tonight for the first time since the US Supreme Court approved lethal injection as an execution method, with activists predictably launching a protest in response at the capitol. Twelve executions have been scheduled between now and the end of the year. For whatever reason, Dallas judges have actually scheduled more executions so far than judges in Harris County, though overall executions from Harris outnumber all other sources.

Interestingly, according to summaries on the TDCJ website, the first five men scheduled to be executed had no prior prison record before they committed the murders that put them on death row; four of those five offenses also involved sexual assault. I don't know the percentage of offenders put to death who'd never been to prison before, but it seems pretty common. Only three of the 12 men with scheduled executions had been incarcerated before committing a capital offense.