After the second Texas mass shooting in a month, Gov. Greg Abbott tweeted Monday night that “we’re working on a legislative package right now” and that “expedited executions for mass murderers would be a nice addition.”

Details, however, were scarce. A spokesman for Abbott said Tuesday morning that he hadn’t spoken to the governor since the tweet was posted and had no more immediate information. The Legislature doesn’t convene again until 2021. Abbott would need to call a special session to pass legislation before then — a move he showed reluctance to make after a mass shooting in El Paso last month.

Abbott’s tweet linked to an article in The Blaze on the U.S. Department of Justice drafting legislation to speed up executions of people who commit mass murder; that article attributed the news to Bloomberg. In Texas, the average time spent on death row is almost 11 years, according to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. The more than 200 people on death row have been there an average of nearly 16 years.

The Texas death penalty appellate process winds through both state and federal courts. Speeding up that process for mass shootings would lead to inconsistency and an uneven justice system, said Amanda Marzullo, the executive director of Texas Defender Service, which represents death-sentenced appellants and advocates for death penalty reform.

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