The Daily Background
| Chart: Executions in Texas by Governor, 1976-2007
by Arlen Parsa
Recently it became clear that the Bush Administration fired two US Attorneys (federal prosecutors) after they refused to push for the death penalty in some cases because they believed it was morally wrong.
President Bush has a long history of being very supportive of the death penalty, so I thought I’d create a chart to show the number of executions carried out in Texas since 1976 when a ban was lifted. Below are the actual numbers of people executed by each Texas’ governor, along with party affiliation:
Bill Clements (R) served 1979-1983: 1 person
Mark White (D) served 1983-1987: 19 people
Bill Clements (R) served 1987-1991: 17 people
Ann Richards (D) served 1991 to 1995: 48 people
George W. Bush (R) served 1995-2000: 154 people
Rick Perry (R) served 2000 to present: 148 people
It should be noted that Bill Clements served two full terms, and Rick Perry is in his second term. Perry is likely to surpass Bush’s record during his second term, although because Bush served only one term (actually less than a term, since he resigned as Governor before the 2002 Texas Gubernatorial election to become President), he will probably still hold the record for highest number of executions even by the time Perry leaves office in 2010.
Update: An earlier version of this post said that Bush served only one term as governor, this is incorrect: he won the 1994 election and was re-elected in 1998. Either way, he did not serve two full terms, as Perry is expected to.
Bush is a blood-thirsty bastard.
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