Top 20 Death Penalty States
According to the Death Penalty Information Center, Texas leads all other states in the total number of individuals that it has executed since 1976. The breakdown is as follows:
1. Texas: 405
2. Virginia: 98
3. Oklahoma: 86
4. Missouri: 66
5. Florida: 64
6. North Carolina: 43
7. Georgia: 40
8. Alabama: 38
9. South Carolina: 37
10. Louisiana: 27
11. Arkansas: 27
12. Ohio: 26
13. Arizona: 23
14. Indiana: 19
15. Delaware: 14
16. California: 13
17. Illinois: 12
18. Nevada: 12
19. Mississippi: 8
20. Utah: 6
What is particularly troubling about the fact that Texas has executed more than four times the number of individuals executed by Virginia--the second state on the list--is that Texas currently accounts for fourteen percent of the estimated 216 DNA-based exonerations in the United States. And Dallas County, with seventeen exonerations from genetic testing, tops every other local jurisdiction in the U.S. since 2001.
