FACTBOX: Executions in Texas and the United States

(Reuters) - Texas is poised to execute its 400th inmate since it resumed the practice of capital punishment in 1982, a far higher total than any other American state.

Following are some facts and figures about executions in Texas and the United States, the only western industrialized democracy that still carries out the death penalty.

-- There are 38 U.S. states with the death penalty plus the U.S. government and the U.S. military. The U.S. Supreme Court lifted a ban on capital punishment in 1976. Twelve states and the District of Columbia do not have the death penalty.

-- Texas leads the way by far with 398 executions in what some refer to as the "modern" capital punishment era which began in Utah on January 17, 1977, with the firing squad execution of Gary Gilmore. Virginia is second with 98, Oklahoma is third with 85 and Missouri is next with 66.

-- Of the 1,089 number of executions which have taken place in the United States in the modern era, 891 have occurred in the South.

-- Texas has the second highest per capita execution rate in the United States behind only Oklahoma. Delaware is third but that is only because its population is so small.

-- Some states "clear" their death row cases more quickly than others. Virginia has had 98 executions but only has 20 inmates currently on its death row, a ratio of five executions to each death row inmate. Texas has 393 inmates on its death row making its ratio almost one on one.

-- Forty-two percent of death row inmates are black though African Americans account for only about 13 percent of the U.S. population. About 45 percent of death row convicts are white.

-- The most common method of execution by far in the United States is lethal injection.

-- The number of executions in America have been falling, in part because of lower murder rates but also because of concerns about the lethal injection method and wrongful convictions. There were 53 executions in the United States last year, the lowest number since 1996, when there were 45.

-- Serial killer Ted Bundy, who was electrocuted in Florida in 1989, and Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh, who was put to death by lethal injection in 2001, are two of the most famous criminals who have been executed in the United States in the modern era.

(Source: Death Penalty Information Center; Texas Department of Criminal Justice; Reuters)