Salon.com News | Study: Texas executed most inmates in 2002

Texas executed 33 people this year, the most of any state in the nation and almost double the number put to death in the state last year, a study showed.

Since resuming executions 20 years ago, 289 Texas inmates have been executed, far more than in any other state. The 17 executions in Texas in 2001 represented a sharp drop for the state, which executed a record 40 people in 2000 and has executed an average of 22 inmates annually since 1992.

"What we are finding is that the use of the death penalty is becoming more and more concentrated in Texas and a few other states in the South," said Richard Dieter, who heads the Washington-based Death Penalty Information Center, an anti-death-penalty group that published the study.

"And increasingly, Texas is finding itself standing alone in its increasing application of the death penalty," Dieter said.

Harris County (Houston) sends more people to death row than nearly all states.