Capital convictions declined in 2008, but the Huntsville death machine did not slow – from May through November, the state executed 18 inmates, accounting for half of all executions nationwide.
The total number of inmates executed likely would’ve been higher, were in not for the de facto stay pending the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in a case that challenged the lethal injection method as unconstitutional. The method is legal (at least as practiced in Kentucky, where the case originated), the Supremes opined, opening the doors of the Texas death chamber once more. Of the 18 put to death, nine were black, six were white, and three were Hispanic, reports the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, in their second annual report on the state of capital punishment in Texas.
According to the TCADP report, 10 inmates received a stay of execution in 2008 (four were ultimately executed); and eight inmates were released from the row when their sentences were commuted to life in prison. And one inmate, Michael Blair, was exonerated, after DNA testing failed to connect him to the rape-murder of seven-year-old Ashley Estell. Blair is the ninth inmate exonerated from Texas’ death row. He spent 14 years on the row for Estell’s murder. (Blair remains in prison, however, where he’s serving life for other crimes.)
This article appears in December 5 • 2008.