“There are currently 126 Harris County offenders under sentence of death in Texas. Only six states apart from Texas currently have more prisoners on death row – Alabama, California, Florida, North Carolina, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. Between them, those six states account for 23 times the population of Harris County, and see thousands more murders take place in them each year than occur in Harris County. Together, these six states have executed 185 inmates in the past three decades, only twice the number of Harris County offenders who have been put to death.
“In Texas itself, Harris County is ahead of other local jurisdictions in ensuring a steady flow of individuals for the state’s lethal injection team to kill. The number of Harris County offenders executed or remaining on death row – 225 – is only equalled by grouping together the next seven largest Texas counties of Bexar, Dallas, Tarrant, Travis, El Paso, Hidalgo and Collin – counties whose jurisdictions include the cities of Austin, Dallas, El Paso, Fort Worth and San Antonio and whose combined populations account for nearly five million more inhabitants than Harris County and around a hundred more murders each year.
For the complete report and suggestions for a letter writing campaign to the Harris County District Attorney, see Amnesty International: One county, 100 executions: Harris County and Texas – A lethal combination–gm
Texas Civil Rights Review 