Georgia, which became the nation's first to hold an execution after the Supreme Court upheld lethal injections, is now attempting its third in just a month.
Meanwhile, only two other states - Mississippi and Virginia - have put inmates to death.
The moves come after a seven-month nationwide halt on executions while the court considered the constitutionality of the method.
That's about to change. Texas, which has led the nation in executions since the 1970s, has 14 scheduled into the fall. And eight other states have set execution dates before the summer's end, according to Capital Defense Weekly, a Web site for death penalty lawyers.
Why was Georgia so quick out of the box?
Experts say Georgia has a shorter waiting period - a maximum of just 29 days - than some other states to move forward with an execution once a death warrant is signed. Once the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in April that the three-drug lethal injection method used by most states was constitutional, Georgia was able to move with almost no delay.
And there were already several cases in the pipeline when the high court took up the lethal
injection challenge. The backlog was created in part because Georgia held only one execution between 2006 and 2007.
"In some ways, it's the luck of the draw," said Georgia Department of Corrections spokesman Paul Czachowski.William Earl Lynd's execution on May 6 was the first in the nation after the April Supreme Court ruling. He was convicted of killing his live-in girlfriend in Berrien County two decades ago.
Samuel David Crowe was scheduled to die on May 22 but had his sentence commuted to life in prison without parole just hours before he was to be put to death.
The state is set to move forward with its third execution on Wednesday for Curtis Osborne, for killing a Spalding County couple in 1990.
Bill Hoffmann, an attorney representing Osborne, said he can't fault the state for its aggressive strategy.
"We had a stay awaiting the decision, and now it's been lifted," he said. "The state's gotta do what the state's got to do."Still, Sara Totonchi of the Southern Center for Human Rights, said she's been surprised by the fast early pace Georgia has set.
"Why the rush?" she asked. "Is this really an area where Georgia wants to be leading the nation?"Prosecutors dispute that the state is moving quickly at all, noting that Lynd, Crowe and Osborne have each been on death row for almost two decades.
"What rush? Just look at how old these cases are," said Rick Malone, executive director of the Prosecuting Attorneys Council of Georgia.There's no denying that politics also plays a role in the scheduling of death penalty cases, said Richard Dieter, executive director of the Washington D.C.-based Death Penalty Information Center, which opposes capital punishment.
He said "informal slowdowns" take place in states where politicians are less enthusiastic about capital punishment, while cases move more quickly in states where influential leaders are in favor of the death penalty.
"I would say the political shifts in Georgia favor executions and so you are seeing that," he said.Even if more executions are scheduled in Georgia this year it's unlikely the state will surpass the record of 23 conducted in 1935, when the Georgia's death row was using the electric chair.
Four executions were performed in both 2001 and 2002. That's the highest number since the state adopted lethal injection as its method of execution in October 2001.
Click here for more GPB News coverage of the issue of capital punishment.
(The Associated Press)
