The Wynne Unit is pictured on May 21, 2013 in Huntsville, one of the seven prison units in Walker County, Texas. The US State of Texas is preparing to execute its 500 convict since the death penalty was restored in 1976, a record in a country where capital punishment is elsewhere in decline.
Photo: CHANTAL VALERY/AFP/Getty Images
On Wednesday, Texas carried out its 500th execution since the state reinstated capital punishment in 1982. Kimberly McCarthy, 52, was executed by lethal injection for beating and stabbing her neighbor to death in 1997. To put the rate of Texas executions in a national perspective, since the Supreme Court lifted a moratorium in 1976, Virginia, the state with the second-largest number of executions, has put 110 people to death.
