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Texas will almost certainly reach the grim total of 400 executions in 25 years this month, far ahead of any other American state.
The toll is testament to the influence of the state's conservative evangelical Christians and its cultural mix of Old South and Wild West.
"In Texas you have all the elements lined up. Public support, a governor who supports it and supportive courts," said Death Penalty Information Centre executive director Richard Dieter.
"If any of those things are hesitant, the process slows down. With all cylinders working, as in Texas, it produces a lot of executions."
Texas has executed 398 convicts since it resumed the practice in 1982, six years after the US Supreme Court lifted a ban on capital punishment.
It has far exceeded second-place Virginia, with 98 executions since the ban was lifted, and has five executions scheduled this month.
The average time spent on death row before execution in Texas is about 10 years, not much less than the national average of nearly 11 years, says the Death Penalty Information Centre.
But the average would be considerably longer if Texas were excluded.
A Texas governor can commute a death sentence or grant a reprieve based on a recommendation from the Board of Pardons and Paroles.
But governors past and present, including President George W. Bush and the state's current chief executive Rick Perry, have taken a hands-off approach.
"The courts are not much of a check in Texas and the Executive defers to the courts," said Jordan Steiker, a law professor at the University of Texas at Austin.
Like his predecessor, Perry is a devout Christian, which highlights one factor in Texas' enthusiasm for the death penalty that many outsiders find puzzling - the support it gets from conservative evangelical churches.
This is in line with their emphasis on individuals taking responsibility for their own salvation, and they also find justification in scripture.
"A lot of evangelical Protestants not only believe that capital punishment is permissible but that it is demanded by God," said Matthew Wilson, a political scientist at Southern Methodist University in Dallas.
Texas also stands at an unusual geographical and cultural crossroads: part Old South, with its legacy of racism, and part Old West, with a cowboy sense of rough justice.
Some critics say the South can be seen in the racial bias of death sentencing, though Texas is not alone on this.
More than 41 per cent of the inmates on death row in Texas are black, but blacks are only about 12 per cent of the state's population.
For some in Texas, the death penalty is about the victim.
"It's the criminal justice system, not the victim justice system. I need to get justice for my victim. I need to see that justice here on Earth," said Cathy Hill, whose husband Barry was shot dead while working as a deputy sheriff almost seven years ago. His killer is on Texas' death row.
Support for capital punishment in Texas has also been attributed to the state's rate of violent crime, though it is not strikingly above the national average.
FBI statistics for 2005 show the national rate of violent crime was 469.2 per 100,000 inhabitants and the rate for murder and non-negligent manslaughter was 5.6. For Texas, the figures were 529.7 and 6.2.
Although the busy death chamber in the city of Huntsville, where 19 inmates have been executed by lethal injection this year, makes Texas stand out, it is starting to follow national trends towards fewer death sentences.
Figures from the state's Office of Court Administration for the decade to 2006 show a sharp drop in the number of death sentences imposed.
The highs over that period were in 1997 and 1999, each with 37 death sentences.
But in 2005, only 14 convicts were condemned to die.
The longer trend is a decline in homicides - from a peak of 2652 in 1991 to 1407 in 2005. Fewer murders should translate into fewer death sentences.
Demographics could help tilt the balance a bit further, as the state's booming economy attracts outsiders - and potential jury members - from more liberal regions and as its Latino population grows rapidly.
DEATH IN THE UNITED STATES
Thirty-eight American states, the Federal Government and the US military have the death penalty. The US Supreme Court lifted a ban on capital punishment in 1976.
* Texas leads the way by far with 398 executions in what some refer to as the "modern" capital punishment era which began in Utah on January 17, 1977, with the firing-squad execution of Gary Gilmore. Virginia is second with 98, Oklahoma is third with 85 and Missouri is next with 66.
* Of the 1089 US executions in the modern era, 891 have taken place in the South.
* Texas has the second highest per capita execution rate in the US, behind Oklahoma. Delaware is third but only because its population is so small.
* Some states "clear" their death row cases more quickly than others. Virginia has had 98 executions but has only 20 inmates on its death row, a ratio of five executions to each death row inmate. Texas has 393 inmates on its death row, making its ratio almost one on one.
* Forty-two per cent of death row inmates are black, although African Americans are only about 13 per cent of the US population. About 45 per cent of death row convicts are white; the rest are Hispanic and other races.
* The most common method of execution in the United States is lethal injection.
* The number of executions has been falling, partly because murder rates are also falling, but also because of concerns about the lethal injection method and wrongful convictions. There were 53 executions in the US last year, the lowest number since 1996, when there were 45.
* Serial killer Ted Bundy, who was electrocuted in Florida in 1989, and Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh, who was put to death by lethal injection in 2001, are two of the most famous criminals executed in the United States in the modern era.
- Reuters
