Texas' death row is getting its first inmate of 2015, ending a 10-month hiatus in death sentences imposed by juries in the most active U.S. state for capital punishment.
A Brazos County jury decided after seven hours of deliberation Wednesday that 22-year-old Gabriel Hall should be executed for an attack that left a man dead and his wife injured at the couple's home.
The lull in death sentences in Texas is similar to what other capital punishment states have experienced in recent years.
The Texas hiatus is believed to be the longest the state has seen since the U.S. Supreme Court, ruling in a Georgia case in 1972, effectively halted executions. The Supreme Court in 1976 upheld Georgia's amended death penalty law, clearing the way for executions in the U.S. to resume.
Statistics kept by the Death Penalty Information Center show 73 people nationwide were sentenced to die last year. In 1996, the nation's death rows swelled by 315 inmates.
"It's definitely slowing down, especially compared to the 1990s," Richard Dieter, senior program director for the Washington-based organization that opposes capital punishment, said Thursday. "It's reflected in almost every state."
He said Missouri, an active death penalty state, had no death sentences last year. Oklahoma had 15 of the sentences in 1998 but just two last year. North Carolina had 20 in 1998 and now is averaging a couple per year, he said.
"Certainly it's a national phenomenon, but the crime rates are lower, too," Dieter said. "So there's a lot of factors going into this."
Both executions and death sentences have declined since about 2000, he said, with cases undergoing more legal scrutiny and DNA testing becoming more prominent. He said there's "a whole range of things that has made the system more cautious when it comes to the death penalty."
In 1994, 49 inmates arrived on death row in Texas, nearly one a week. In 2000, the state executed 40 inmates. Since then, courts have narrowed some of the conditions for death sentences such as exempting inmates with mental impairment or those who were younger than 18 when their crimes occurred.
At the state level, juries considering death sentences in Texas in recent years have been given the option of life without parole.
Texas now has 253 inmates currently on its death row with the addition of Hall.
This content appears as provided to The Globe by the originating wire service. It has not been edited by Globe staff.