USA - Mississippi. State Leads Nation in Executions.

State Leads Nation in Executions. Mississippi holds a dubious `st-place standing for executing more people than any other state in the union this year. On Wednesday, Gary Carl Simmons Jr., 49, became the 6th inmate the Magnolia State put to death this year. Across the nation, states have executed 22 prisoners this year. Texas has executed 5 death-row prisoners; Oklahoma and Arizona are tied for 3rd place in the country, each with 3 executions. In Mississippi, the last time the state Department of Corrections put more than 4 people to death in a single year was 1961. We put 8 people to death in 1955 and 1956. Don Cabana, a former Mississippi corrections commissioner, believes Mississippi's recent spike in the number of executions--2 last year, 3 in 2010, none in 2009 and 2 in 2008--has to do with timing and the pace of appeals. "You have a number of people who have been sitting on death row for a long time whose cases kind of simultaneously, or in close proximity, started exhausting their appeals".