HOUSTON (AP) — When convicted killer Larry Allen Hayes voluntarily went to the death chamber earlier this month, it marked the first time in several decades that Texas executed a white person for killing a black person.
Texas has accounted for more than one-third of the 875 executions in the United States since the Supreme Court brought back capital punishment in 1976, but Hayes, put to death for killing two people, one of whom was black, was the only white executed by the state for killing a black during that time. Texas resumed capital punishment in 1982.
Death penalty opponents say it underscores a nationwide problem.