Suzanne Donovan

Following the approval of a Texas law that speeds up the appeals process for condemned inmates, the state carried out 24 executions in the first half of 1997, breaking its own record of 20 in the entire year of 1935. When this article originally appeared on the MoJo Wire that year, Robert Wallace West was the next man slated for lethal injection. He was executed the day this article ran. What follows is an unprecedented look into life on the Row.