Tough Justice

Texas Executes 500th Inmate

Since it resumed capital punishment 30 years ago.

Death-row inmate Kimberly McCarthy was executed on Wednesday for the 1997 robbery, beating, and fatal stabbing of her 71-year-old neighbor, Dorothy Booth. She was also linked to two additional killings. McCarthy was the 500th person executed by the state since it resumed capital punishment sentences in 1982. Her lawyer made a final appeal, claiming that black jurors were improperly excluded from the trial, but was denied by the court. Texas has a notoriously tough justice system, and 40 percent of the 1,300 executions in the U.S. since 1976 have been carried out in the Lone Star State. McCarthy was the 13th woman put to death in U.S. history.