This was the week in which America’s ailing death penalty bit back. Such a concentrated glut of judicial killing was last seen more than 20 years ago in the US.

Across the US south and midwest – from Alabama to Missouri, Oklahoma to South Carolina, and of course in the heart of it all, Texas – states fired up their death chambers. Experts said it was a random coincidence that so many capital cases, with their convoluted legal journeys, came to a climax at once.

But there was nothing random or coincidental about the disdain for probable innocence that was on display this week. Nor about the racial animus, or the callous indifference to life animating supposedly “right-to-life” states.

“This week has exposed the reality of the death penalty in America, in all its brutality and injustice,” said Maya Foa, joint executive director of the human rights group Reprieve. “Across the US, executing states are going to ever more extreme lengths to prop up the practice.”