Hanging in Texas was the state’s official method of execution for just over a century, from 1819 until 1923, when the legislature replaced the gallows with the electric chair and moved all executions from county jail yards to the state penitentiary in Huntsville.1Texas Department of Criminal Justice. Death Row Information Lethal injection took over in 1982 and remains the method today.
Crimes That Could Send Someone to the Gallows
The Texas Penal Code of 1856 set out the offenses that could carry a death sentence. Premeditated murder accounted for the great majority of hangings. Treason against the state carried a mandatory death sentence, covering acts such as waging war against Texas or aiding its enemies. Sexual assault also qualified as a capital offense in certain cases where the circumstances met specific thresholds of violence, and that remained true for a long time: when the Supreme Court decided Furman v. Georgia in 1972, Texas still authorized the death penalty for rape under its penal code.2Justia. Furman v Georgia, 408 US 238 (1972)
Judges had little room to maneuver once a jury returned a guilty verdict in a capital case. The statute directed execution by hanging, and alternative sentences were rarely available. Uniformity within a county was built in. Mercy was not.
How a County Hanging Was Carried Out
Before 1923, carrying out a death sentence was entirely a county matter. The local sheriff held the legal duty to manage every phase, from building the gallows to certifying the death. Under the 1879 Code of Criminal Procedure, the gallows had to be erected within the county jail grounds, and the county paid for the materials and construction.
The code also tried to keep these events from turning into public spectacles. Witness lists were restricted to six local property owners, six physicians, and no more than four justices of the peace. In counties without proper jail facilities, the sheriff was required to find an alternative location that was as private as possible. The same code authorized sheriffs to organize citizens or call on militia to keep mobs from storming the execution site, whether those mobs meant to rescue the condemned or to harm them further.
In practice, the privacy rules were routinely ignored. Large crowds often gathered to watch, turning what the statute framed as a closed proceeding into a public one. That gap between the law on the page and the scene on the ground became one of the arguments reformers later used to push for centralized executions behind prison walls.
The Last Hanging and the Move to Huntsville
The final legal hanging in Texas took place on August 31, 1923, in Angleton. By then the legislature had already passed a bill replacing the gallows with the electric chair and moving all future executions to the state penitentiary in Huntsville. The new law took effect on August 14, 1923, just weeks before that last county hanging was carried out.
The legislation did two things at once. It swapped out an execution method that had been in use since 1819 for what lawmakers considered a more uniform and humane alternative. And it stripped counties of their execution authority. Sheriffs no longer built gallows or ran hangings. Once a death sentence became final, the condemned prisoner was transported from county custody to the state, and county officials were legally obligated to deliver the prisoner to the state prison director.3Texas Archival Resources Online. Texas Department of Criminal Justice Death Row Historical Files (Execution Files) Everything that followed happened in Huntsville.1Texas Department of Criminal Justice. Death Row Information
The first electrocution in Texas took place on February 8, 1924. Five men were executed that night at the Huntsville prison, beginning with Charlie Reynolds. The electric chair would remain the state’s execution method for the next five decades.
From the Electric Chair to Lethal Injection
Texas used the electric chair from 1924 until the Supreme Court effectively halted executions nationwide in 1972. In Furman v. Georgia, the Court ruled that the death penalty as then applied amounted to cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth Amendment. The core problem was unchecked jury discretion: sentencing varied so widely that outcomes were, in the Court’s view, arbitrary and discriminatory.2Justia. Furman v Georgia, 408 US 238 (1972)
Four years later, Gregg v. Georgia reopened the door. The Court held that the death penalty for murder was not inherently unconstitutional, provided states adopted structured sentencing procedures: a separate sentencing phase after the guilt determination, standards guiding jury discretion through aggravating and mitigating factors, and meaningful appellate review of both the conviction and the sentence.4Constitution Annotated, Congress.gov. Amdt8.4.9.4 Gregg v Georgia and Limits on Death Penalty
Texas rewrote its capital statute to meet those requirements. In 1977 the legislature also changed the execution method from electrocution to lethal injection, making Texas the first state to authorize that approach. The current protocol uses pentobarbital, a barbiturate administered intravenously at the Huntsville Unit; if the initial five-gram dose does not cause death within a sufficient period, a second dose is administered.5Supreme Court of the United States. TDCJ Execution Procedure
The first lethal injection execution in Texas, and in the entire country, was carried out on December 7, 1982. Texas has used lethal injection exclusively ever since.
Lynching Alongside Legal Hanging
Legal hangings were not the only hangings in Texas during this period. Between 1885 and 1942, at least 468 people were lynched in the state. Of those victims, 339 were Black, 77 were white, 53 were Hispanic, and one was American Indian. These killings happened entirely outside the legal system, carried out by mobs rather than courts, and they far outnumbered legal executions during the same years.
The two spheres overlapped often enough that the 1879 Code of Criminal Procedure specifically authorized sheriffs to organize armed forces to keep mobs away from execution sites. Moving executions to Huntsville in 1923 did not end lynching, but it did pull one setting where legal proceedings and mob action had most visibly collided out of the counties.
Is Hanging Still Used Anywhere Today?
No state currently uses hanging as its primary method of execution. New Hampshire’s statute technically allowed hanging as a backup when lethal injection proved impractical, but the state abolished the death penalty entirely in 2019, rendering that provision moot. Lethal injection is now the standard across every state that retains capital punishment.
Texas has carried out more executions than any other state since reinstating the death penalty in the 1970s, and all of them have used lethal injection. The gallows that once stood in county jail yards across Texas have been gone for a century.