Texas Execution Information

History of the Death Penalty in Texas

1923-1964: The Electric Chair
Prior to 1923, counties carried out their own executions, by means of hanging. In 1923, the state of Texas ordered all executions to be carried out by the state, in Huntsville, by means of the electric chair. The state executed its first inmate by electrocution on 8 February 1924. Five prisoners were electrocuted on that date.

Death row and the execution chamber were located in the Huntsville unit from 1928 to 1965. The last electrocution was carried out on 30 July 1964. Texas electrocuted a total of 361 inmates from 1924 to 1964.

1964-1982: Moratorium
In 1964, judicial challenges to capital punishment resulted in a de facto moratorium on executions in the United States. On 29 June 1972, in Furman v. Georgia, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that every state death penalty law in the U.S. was unconstitutional because the death penalty was being unfairly and arbitrarily assigned. At that time, there were 52 men in Texas with death sentences. Governor Preston Smith commuted all of their sentences to life, and death row was clear by March 1973.

In 1973, Texas passed a new statue to standardize the way the death penalty was assessed. Juries quickly began imposing death sentences under the new statute, and death row began filling up again in 1974.

In 1977, Texas adopted lethal injection as its means of execution. The first lethal injection was given on 7 December 1982.

1982-1991: Lethal Injection Begins
During the moratorium years, death row was moved from the downtown Huntsville unit to the brand-new Ellis unit, which opened in July 1965. The execution chamber remained at the Huntsville unit. When Texas resumed executions in 1982, prisoners were transported from the Ellis unit, 12 miles north of town, to be executed.

Although executions resumed in 1982, they were rare at first. One execution was carried out in 1982, and none in 1983. For the next eight years, executions were carried out at the average rate of five per year. Thus, in the first ten years of capital punishment in Texas, there were 43 executions.

In 1989, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Penry v. Lynaugh that juries had to be allowed to hear and consider mitigating evidence, such as a defendant's history of mental retardation and child abuse, when imposing death sentences. Some prisoners' death sentences were vacated as a result of this decision. The Texas legislature modified the sentencing instructions given to juries in 1991, resulting in the three-question format that is in use to this day.

1992-1999: Pace of Executions Increases
In 1992, the number of executions jumped dramatically. Over the next four years, 62 prisoners were executed, an average of fifteen per year.

In 1995, the Texas legislature passed a law requiring certain death-row appeals to be filed concurrently. The intent of this law was to reduce the amount of time prisoners spent on death row waiting for their legal appeals to be pursued. The short-term effect of this new law was that executions virtually stopped while it was being appealed. From March 1996 to January 1997, there was only one execution in the state. However, after the law withstood legal challenge, executions resumed at double their old pace. Over the next three years, there were 92 executions.

On Thanksgiving Day, 1998, seven death-row prisoners attempted to escape from the Ellis unit. Six were captured on prison grounds, but one prisoner, Martin Gurule, successfully made it outside. However, Gurule was mortally wounded in the attempt, and on 3 December he was found dead in the Trinity river, not far from Huntsville. Because of this incident, Texas began moving the men on death row from the Ellis unit to the Terrell unit. The Terrell unit, opened in 1993, was considered more secure than the Huntsville unit. It is located just outside the town of Livingston, about 45 minutes from Huntsville. By law, prisoners are still transported to Huntsville to be executed. (The Terrell unit was renamed the Polunsky unit in 2001.)

2000-2005: National Scrutiny
In 2000, several factors caused the death penalty to come under scrutiny unprecedented since the late 1960's to early 1970's. In additon to the long-standing charges that the death penalty is cruel, unfair to minorities, and a barbaric, inhumane instrument unfit for a civilized society, opponents of capital punishment began pressing their belief that innocent people were being executed in the United States. In January 2000, after several well-publicized exonerations of death row inmates in Illinois, Governor George Ryan declared a moratorium on executions in his state until a study could be undertaken to evaluate the practice of capital punishment.

Texas came under especially strong national scrutiny in 2000 for two reasons: one is because it led the nation in executions -- more than all other 37 death-penalty states combined. The other reason is because Texas Governor George W. Bush was running for President, and by March, he had effectively won the Republican Party nomination.

One of the main weapons death-penalty opponents weilded in the attack on capital punishment was the availability of DNA testing. DNA testing methods are much more sophisticated today than when most death-row inmates were convicted, so the argument is that DNA evidence should be retested in cases where the defendant's guilt is in doubt. On 1 June, Gov. Bush issued a 30-day stay of execution to convicted murderer Ricky McGinn, for DNA testing. McGinn was convicted of raping and murdering, his 12-year-old stepdaughter in 1993. McGinn was executed in September after the tests came back positive. The legislature passed a law in 2001 guaranteeing DNA testing to any condemned prisoner whose innocence might be secured as a result.

The other principal issue of the early 2000's was whether prisoners who are mentally retarded should be executed. Several states passed laws banning the execution of the mentally retarded. The Texas legislature passed such a law in 2001, but Governor Rick Perry vetoed it, noting that Texas law already protects the mentally incompetent from execution, and that juries should be allowed to decide whether a convicted killer deserves the death penalty. On 20 June 2002, the U.S. Supreme Court found in Atkins v. Virginia that a "national consensus" had developed that executing mentally retarded prisoners is cruel and unusual punishment, and therefore the Court ruled it unconstitutional. The Court left it to the states to determine how mental retardation would be determined.

The Supreme Court further restricted the application of the death penalty in 2005, when it ruled that prisoners who commited their capital offenses when they were under age 18 could not be executed.