Texas Steps Up Executions to Clear Logjam

A dozen condemned inmates in Texas's "death watch" cells are being executed at a scheduled rate of two a week through November. The executions relieve a logjam created when the US Supreme Court effectively halted lethal injections while deciding whether the method was unconstitutionally inhumane. It ruled the method constitutional, and executions resumed.

Despite the death chamber's revolving door in October and November, the state will fall below its average of 25 executions a year and its record 40 in 2000, when George W. Bush was governor. "Will crime stop? Will my death stop what's going on in everyday society?" said a convicted killer executed last week. "They're just killing people."
(More Texas stories.)