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Texas Set To Execute 500th Inmate

Texas is approaching a grim milestone: It will soon execute the 500th prisoner since the death penalty resumed in the United States.

Barring a reprieve, Kimberly McCarthy will be executed by lethal injection on Wednesday night for the killing of her neighbor during a robbery in 1997.

Texas has accounted for nearly 40 percent of the more than 1,300 executions carried out since murderer Gary Gilmore went before a Utah firing squad in 1977 and became the first U.S. inmate executed following the Supreme Court's clarification of death penalty laws.

Virginia's death chamber is the second-busiest in the country, but the state is still nearly 400 executions behind Texas.

Copyright 2013 The Associated Press.