Letters: TEXAS has executed its ninth victim this year.

The victim was injected with a single dose of pentobarbital shortly after 6pm and pronounced dead at 6.49pm.

The drug's provenance is not disclosed by the state.

This follows the execution of another inmate after 32 years on death row whose guilt was based on purely circumstantial evidence and after a witness came forward who said she knew who the actual killers were.

Since 1976 Texas has executed 521 men and six women, including victims who were mentally incompetent juvenile when the crime was committed and foreign nationals refused consular access and help.

Meanwhile two death row inmates have been exonerated, one when the charges were dismissed after 10 years on death row and another after 18 years on death row.

It is a statistical certainty that others of the 521 executed men were innocent.

The death penalty is an abomination that has no place in a democratic world.

DIETER MOECKEL

Wonbah