Wow. If you’re a fan of history and are interested in state justice (and injustice) and have a taste for the macabre (not incompatible with the previous two avocations) Executed Today is your new thing. This blog covered the state murder of Cameron Todd Willingham a year and a half before the excellent New Yorker piece.

There’s been a single execution in all of New England since 1960, in Connecticut. The large majority of executions are in the South, but particularly in Texas.

The most recent execution in the US was yesterday. Reginald Blanton was executed in Texas. There is some question as to his guilt.

I don’t know why we continue to “tinker with the machinery of death” in the words of Justice Blackmun. Really, it just seems so unwise.