Quote:
Originally posted by KillerYoda
...George W. Bush? Former governor from the state with the leading number of executions, Bush?
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Okay, fun with statistics time...
In 2000 and 2002, Texas had the most executions out of any state.
In 2001, Texas had the second most executions out of any state.
According to the 2000 census, Texas has the second highest population out of any state.
Hmmmmmmmm, just coincidence that a state with more people in it than most states would execute more people than most states? California is #1 in population, but of course since California tends to be a very liberal state they don't execute many people.
If you count per-capita, which makes more sense to me from a mathematical point of view, Texas is still one of the higher on the list (#2 in 2000, #4 in 2001, and estimated #3 in 2002 but my data for 2002 is incomplete), but the per-capita rate really isn't significantly higher than the other states that have the death penalty. For the last three years, Oklahoma has been the #1 state for executions per-capita, and was
very disproportiante in 2001, with a per-capita rate over 6 times higher than Texas.
So if you want to rip on states for killing their own citizens, pick Oklahoma, Delaware, or Missouri. They have less people to start with than Texas but they kill a higher percentage of them.
Check it out:
http://www.dpio.org/executions/