Texas to Execute 500th Person

Texas might not have been able to pass one of the most expansive abortion restrictions in the country Monday night, but it hasn’t lost everything it holds dear. The state with the biggest death-penalty program—responsible for about 40 percent of the 1,300 executions that have taken place in the U.S. since the Supreme Court ruled that capital punishment legal in 1976—is set to execute its 500th prisoner Wednesday. No. 500, Kimberly McCarthy, a 52-year-old convicted killer, will also be the first woman in the country to be put to death since 2010. The attorney for McCarthy, who was convicted of robbing, beating, and stabbing retired professor Dorothy Booth to death in 1997, said she’s made every attempt to keep her client from execution. “If there was something to appeal, I would.”