What is it with Texas? While the rest of the country is rethinking the death penalty and Illinois has emptied Death Row, Texas is proceeding at a record pace.

Eight of the nation's first 10 executions in 2003--including six in January--were carried out in the Huntsville prison unit commonly called The Walls. Nearly half of the next two dozen scheduled executions also will be in Texas. By the end of March, Texas should record its 300th execution--more than one-third of all those in the country since the mid-1970s, when the death penalty was reinstated in the United States after a brief Supreme Court-imposed hiatus.

Aside from the excessive number of executions in Texas, the state's death penalty system is rife with other miscarriages of justice. Here's a few:

A Tribune investigation of the death penalty in Texas in June 2000 found that the system repeatedly was compromised by the use of unreliable evidence, incompetent defense attorneys and an appeals system that often fails to remedy injustices.

This year--as Texas moves toward possibly breaking its record of 40 executions in a year, set in 2000--the cases involving those put to death by the state have raised troubling issues.

One man's state appeal was presided over by a judge who had been a prosecutor and done research for prosecutors at the man's original trial, according to defense attorneys.

Another prisoner had no federal review of his case because his lawyer filed his appeal five days after a key deadline. Consequently, the prisoner forfeited that critical stage of review, although the mistake was his attorney's, not his.

Another inmate was executed even though the jurors who convicted him later signed a statement in which they requested that he be allowed DNA testing before his execution.

Other inmates claimed that their attorneys were incompetent or inexperienced or that the inmates suffered from brain damage--issues that might have been grounds for relief from an appeals court.

Among those calling for a moratorium on the Texas death penalty this week was the League of Women Voters of Texas.

The pressure will mount in Texas, the same way it did in Illinois. We need a nationwide moratorium now. This will be an issue in the 2004 elections, we promise.