Good old Texas

Seems that Texas, in both finite numbers and percentage, leads the nation in executions, yet again.
From a New York Times on-line article: Over the past three decades, the proportion of executions nationwide performed in Texas has held relatively steady, averaging 37 percent. Only once before, in 1986, has the state accounted for even a slight majority of the executions, and that was in a year with only 18 executions nationwide.
But this year, enthusiasm for executions outside of Texas dropped sharply. Of last year’s 42 executions, 26 were in Texas. The remaining 16 were spread across nine other states, none of which executed more than three people. Many legal experts say that trend is likely to continue. For the first time in the modern history of the death penalty, more than 60 percent of all American executions took place in Texas.
Indeed, said David R. Dow, a law professor at the University of Houston who has represented death row inmates, the day is not far off when essentially all executions in the United States will take place in Texas. “The reason that Texas will end up monopolizing executions,” he said, “is because every other state will eliminate it de jure, as New Jersey did, or de facto, as other states have.”
Outside of Texas, “we’re seeing fewer executions,” said Joshua Marquis, the district attorney in Clatsop County, Oregon, and a vice president of the National District Attorneys Association. “We’re seeing fewer people sentenced to death. People really do question capital punishment. The whole idea of exoneration has really penetrated popular culture.”

Popular culture, maybe. Rico's heart? Nope. As the saying in Texas goes, some people just deserve killing...