SACRAMENTO, Dec. 19 (UPI) -- More people have been sentenced to death this year in California than in any other state, with 29 inmates added to its crowded death row, officials say.
Los Angeles County accounted for 13 death sentences, more than in Florida or Texas, the Los Angeles Times reported Saturday.
In 2008, California sentenced 20 people to death. The state has been bucking a national trend of fewer death sentences. Texas, where an average of 34 death sentences were handed out a year in the 1990s, has sentenced only nine to die in 2009.
Experts were split on the reason for the increase in California, where no one has been executed for four years because of a legal dispute about the lethal injection protocol. Robert Schwartz and other defense lawyers suggest jurors are less sympathetic to convicted killers and more cynical about mitigating evidence.
California has almost 700 inmates on death row in San Quentin Prison, while Texas, which has the nation's busiest death chamber, has 342 under sentence.
"We don't really let them stack up here, like in California," said Sarah Wolf, a spokeswoman for the Texas District and County Attorneys Association.
