UPDATE: Execution stayed.
Texas is planning to carry out the second of its four scheduled June executions today, Wednesday June 15, when John Balentine is scheduled for execution. If the execution is not stayed, Balentine will be the fifth person executed in Texas in 2011 and the 469th person executed in Texas since 1982. He will be the 230th person executed in Texas since Rick Perry became governor.
To express your opposition to John Balentine’s execution and to state your opinion on the Texas death penalty, call Governor Rick Perry at 512-463-2000.
Rick Perry is considering running for president of the United States. Perry’s death penalty enthusiasm will probably be a liability for him in many parts of the country where the governor is expected to exercise his executive powers in a more responsible manner than Perry did in the case of Todd Willingham.
Balentine’s execution is the first of two scheduled in Texas this week. On Thursday, the state is set to execute Lee Taylor for fatally stabbing an inmate at a state prison in 1999. At the time of the stabbing, Taylor was serving a life sentence for aggravated robbery in which an elderly man died, according to the attorney general’s office.
Texas has executed more than four times as many people as any other state since the death penalty was reinstated in the United States in 1976
