Texas Death Penalty Facts

The State of Texas has executed 591 people since 1982, more than any other state by far. Of these executions, 279 occurred during the administration of Texas Governor Rick Perry (2001-2014), more than any other governor in U.S. history.

Texas executed five men in 2024. Three other individuals received stays of exeuction. On October 17, 2024, the Texas Supreme Court halted the scheduled execution of Robert Roberson, an innocent man convicted of a crime that did not occur, after lawmakers issued an subpoena for his testimony.

Harris County alone accounts for 135 executions, including the executions of Arthur Burton and Garcia White this year. This figure represents more executions than any state except Texas. Dallas County accounts for 65 executions, Bexar County for 46, and Tarrant County for 45.

To date in 2024, Texas juries have imposed four new death sentences:

• On January 31, 2024, a Hidalgo County jury sentenced Victor Godinez to death after deliberating for nearly 12 hours. Godinez was convicted of killing Moises Sanchez, a trooper for the Texas Department of Public Safety, who responded to a vehicular accident involving Godinez on April 6, 2019. According to the prosecution’s case, Godinez opened fire at Sanchez while fleeing the scene; Sanchez died several months later in August 2019 following a surgery. This is the first new death sentence in Hidalgo County since 2005.
• On April 24, 2024, a Tarrant County jury sentenced Paige Terrell Lawyer to death for killing his former girlfriend, O’Tishae Womack, and her 10-year-old daughter, Ka’Myria Womack, in 2018. Tarrant County juries have sentenced 76 people to death since 1974.
• On May 2, 2024, a Johnson County jury sentenced Jerry Elders to death for kidnapping and killing Robin Waddell after stealing her car while fleeing law enforcement in 2021. He is the only person currently on death row from Johnson County.
• On November 13, 2024, a Gregg County jury sentenced Gregory Newson to death for killing Panola County Deputy, Chris Dickerson, in 2019. The jury deliberated for less than an hour before delivering a guilty verdict on October 28, 2024. Following several days of testimony in the punishment phase, the jury decided that there were no mitigating factors to prevent a death sentence and concluded that Newson did not have an intellectual disability, which would have rendered him ineligible for the death penalty.

In a fifth trial this year, jurors in Midland County rejected the death penalty for Angel Luis Lebron-Rivera on July 18, 2024, after voting “no” on the issue of future dangerousness. In the past two years, Texas jurors have rejected the death penalty in 30% of cases.

Texas has the third-largest death row population in the nation (174), after California* (640) and Florida (278).

*On March 13, 2019, California Governor Gavin Newsom declared a moratorium on executions.

Race

As death sentences in Texas decline, they continue to be applied disproportionately to people of color. Over the last five years, more than 50 percent of death sentences have been imposed on people of color; nearly 40 percent were imposed on Black defendants.

To learn more…

Watch “What does race have to do with the death penalty in Texas?”

Read Arbitrary and Capricious: Examining Racial Disparities in Harris County’s Pursuit of Death Sentences

Read “Race and ‘future dangerousness’ in the Texas death penalty”

Read “Enduring Injustice: the Persistence of Racial Discrimination in the U.S. Death Penalty”

Gender

According to TDCJ, there are currently 174 people on Texas’s death row, including 7 women. This is the smallest Texas death row population since 1985, when 188 people awaited execution, according to research by TCADP.

As displayed in this interactive map, jurors in just three counties (Harris, Smith, and Tarrant) have imposed more than one death sentence since 2019.

Three counties account for more than half of the current death row population: Harris (64); Dallas (13); and Tarrant (12). No other county has more than eight individuals on death row at this time.

Less than 20% of the 254 counties in Texas account for the current population of death row.

Learn more about the death penalty at the county level here.

Since 1973, 200 individuals who spent time on death row have been exonerated, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. This includes 18 people convicted and sentenced to death in Texas.

There also is strong evidence that the State of Texas has executed innocent people, including Carlos DeLuna, Ruben Cantu, Cameron Todd Willingham, Gary Graham (Shaka Sankofa), Larry Swearingen, and Ivan Cantu.

Learn more about wrongful executions in Texas at TCADP’s Wrongful Execution page and DPIC Special Report: The Innocence Epidemic.

Cost of the Death Penalty

See TCADP’s fact sheet on the cost of the death penalty for details. For additional information, read “Experts discuss cost of the death penalty amid era of growing decline,” Community Impact Newspaper (Richardson edition), March 18, 2020.

National and International Abolition

Eleven states – Colorado, Delaware, New York, New Jersey, New Mexico, Illinois, Connecticut, Washington, Maryland, New Hampshire, and, most recently, Virginia – have abandoned the death penalty in recent years through legislative or judicial action. A total of 23 states and the District of Columbia do not allow the death penalty.

Governors in four other states (Arizona, Oregon, Pennsylvania, and California) have imposed a moratorium on executions, bringing the total number of states that have either ended the death penalty or have a moratorium to 27.

112 countries have abolished the death penalty for all crimes. According to Amnesty International, the five countries with the highest number of executions in 2023 were China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, and the United States. Iran alone accounted for 74% of all recorded executions, while Saudi Arabia accounted for 15%. It remains difficult to determine the exact number of executions in some countries.