Texas loves executing people, and Texas really loves executing people of color.
A new report released on Thursday from the nonprofit Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty (TCADP) reveals stark racial disparities of those put to death in 2024. Four of the five executed men were Black or Hispanic, according to the report’s breakdown, which (along with the state) uses the term Hispanic when referring to Latinos. It’s a statistic that reflects historic — and ongoing — concerns regarding racial equity in Texas’ use of the death penalty.
This year, Texas executed Garcia White of Harris County, who was convicted of multiple murders; Travis Mullis of Brazoria County, who was convicted of killing his infant son; Arthur Burton of Harris County, convicted of killing a mother of three; Ramiro Gonzales of Medina County, convicted of raping and murdering a woman; and Ivan Cantu of Collin County, who was convicted of killing his cousin and his cousin’s fiancée (but maintained his innocence).
While eye-popping, our current racial disparity when it comes to executions is very much in keeping with our state’s history. In Harris County, Texas’ largest county — and the third-most populous county in the United States — Black defendants are historically three times more likely to be sentenced to death than white defendants in similar situations, according to the anti-death penalty nonprofit group Texas Defender Service.
“Even as use of the death penalty remains historically low in Texas, it continues to be imposed disproportionately on people of color and dependent largely on geography,” said Kristin Houlé Cuellar, TCADP Executive Director, in a statement this week. “The arbitrariness of capital punishment and the persistent problem of wrongful convictions should compel Texans to abandon the death penalty altogether.”
Of the current death row inmates, Black men make up 47%, followed by Hispanic men at nearly 27%, and whites at 24%, according to a breakdown by the state’s justice department. Among women, the majority of death row inmates, 57%, are white.
According to TCADP, nearly 70% of death sentences over the past five years have been given to people of color in Texas, with Black defendants accounting for almost 40% of these cases.
Despite the executions, the overall number of new death sentences in Texas remained low. For the tenth consecutive year, death sentences across the state remained in the single digits, reflecting a continued decline in the use of capital punishment. In 2024, Texas juries sentenced six individuals to death. However, concerns about racial disparities persist, as five of those six new death row inmates (83%) were people of color.
So yeah, we’re extremely fucked up about who we execute, and it’s not getting better.
As of Dec. 16, Texas was one of only eight states to carry out executions this year.
Alabama led the nation with six.
