An unusu­al­ly high num­ber of exe­cu­tions are sched­uled for late September and ear­ly October — five states intend to car­ry out six exe­cu­tions in nine days. Pieces in the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post describe the larg­er issues raised by the cas­es in this ​“burst of lethal activ­i­ty.” In the Los Angeles Times, Scott Martelle exam­ined the three exe­cu­tions sched­uled for con­sec­u­tive days in Georgia, Oklahoma, and Virginia, con­clud­ing, ​“So here we have three pend­ing exe­cu­tions: One of a woman who received a harsh­er penal­ty than the co-con­spir­a­tor who com­mit­ted the mur­der; one of a man who very pos­si­bly is inno­cent; and one of a man whose intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty should make him inel­i­gi­ble for the death penal­ty.” Mark Berman, of the Washington Post, not­ed the over­all rar­i­ty of exe­cu­tions and the small num­ber of states that car­ry them out. He says ​“most states have … not been active par­tic­i­pants in the coun­try’s cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment sys­tem” and ​“exe­cu­tions remain clus­tered in a small num­ber of states, a dwin­dling num­ber of loca­tions account­ing for an over­whelm­ing major­i­ty of lethal injec­tions.” Berman notes that the num­ber of exe­cu­tions, the states exe­cut­ing inmates and the num­ber of death sen­tences have all fall­en sig­nif­i­cant­ly since the 1990s and the upcom­ing exe­cu­tions share one com­mon char­ac­ter­is­tic: ​“The states plan­ning the exe­cu­tions this week and next — Georgia, Oklahoma, Virginia, Texas and Missouri — are among the country’s most active death-penal­ty states since the death penal­ty was rein­stat­ed by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1976.” 

(S. Martelle, ​“Three days, three planned exe­cu­tions, three wrong calls,” Los Angeles Times, September 29, 2015; M. Berman, ​“The U.S. has six exe­cu­tions sched­uled over the next nine days,” The Washington Post, September 29, 2015.) See Arbitrariness, Innocence, and Intellectual Disability.

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