Texas prepares for crush of executions

Charles Hood and Lester Bower knew better than to hold out much hope that the U.S. Supreme Court was going to put a stop to their executions when it issued a key ruling on lethal injection last month. After all, in the years the two men have been on Texas' Death Row, they have seen hundreds of inmates go to their executions.

Now, in the wake of the court's ruling clearing the way for use of the lethal three-drug cocktail, Hood and Bower face execution in coming months as the nation's busiest death chamber gets back to business. After Derrick Sonnier's June 3 execution date, Hood is scheduled to die on June 17 and Bower on July 22.

"The way we looked at it onthan half of those scheduled across the country, according to a Texas Department of Criminal Justice spokeswoman. Lawyers who represent Death Row inmates in Texas say they expect the state to execute 25 to 30 prisoners this year and as many as 50 next year.

"It's the typical thing when you get a bottleneck and the bottleneck ends. It all comes gushing out," said David Dow, a professor at the University of Houston Law Center who defends Death Row inmates. "And the line outside the death chamber, as it were, has gotten longer."

Dow described the period before the Supreme Court's decision as a "calm before the storm." He said the de facto moratorium gave lawyers a much-needed respite.

"This," he said, "is what it was like to be a death