1,000th Execution--in the South, naturally

The first stories about the death penalty this week were about the commutation of a death sentence in Virginia by Gov. Mark Warner (read about the clemency here).

Then all eyes in the worldwide human rights community swung a little further south, to North Carolina, where Kenneth Boyd was executed by lethal injection early this morning (read about his execution here).

What's the big deal about N.C.'s third execution in less than a month? Numbers. Boyd was the 1,000th person executed in the USA since capital punishment was reinstated by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1976.

Research consistently shows that the administration of capital punishment has serious problems with race (read more here), economics (read more here), poor defense attorneys (read more here), and even prosecutorial misconduct (read more here).

Texas, Virginia, Florida and North Carolina are among the nation's leaders in executing their residents. Maybe the grisly landmark represented by Boyd's execution, in focusing so much shame on the South, will generate some energy here for the abolition movement. It's already providing fodder for numerous newspaper columns nationwide such as this one.