The 17 East Texas Inmates Currently Sitting on Death Row

There's something harrowing about looking at these photos and staring into the eyes of those who have taken the life of another human being.

Whether their crime was done with the most malevolent of intentions, or out of uncontrolled passion or ignorance, looking at the photos of those condemned to die can cause even the most lighthearted of us to stop and ponder.

There are currently 17 people sitting on death row that come from our East Texas area. One of those is a woman.

Although dates for execution have not yet been set, some of those East Texans on this list have been there for a long time--surprisingly long, actually.

And, as aforementioned, none of the East Texans have received a date for execution, even out of the entire state of Texas, only 3 are currently scheduled for their final reckoning under the Texas law.

That's somewhat unusual when compared with Texas' recent past in this regard.

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KETK reports:

For reference, during Rick Perry’s tenure as Texas Governor between the years of 2001 and 2014, 279 executions were carried out for death row inmates, which is more than any U.S. governor in history. Comparatively, the past two years in 2020 and 2021, only three inmates were executed each year, which is the fewest in the state since 1996. This decrease was, in large part, due to the pandemic.

Ah, well I suppose that makes sense.

Though we are now faced with the Omicron variant surge, once things normalize will we begin to see an increased frequency more akin to what we experienced during Rick Perry's tenure?

We shall see.

For now, these are the 17 East Texans currently awaiting their date of execution in Texas: