What do Texas, Missouri, Georgia and Florida have in common with China, Iran, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia? All are outliers in their continued use of the death penalty, which is being abandoned in most of the rest of the United States and the world.

Those four states were responsible for all but two of America’s 28 executions last year. Likewise, those four countries account for the overwhelming majority of global executions, according to a new report by Amnesty International. The report documented 1,634 executions globally in 2015, not counting China, which executes more people than all other countries combined, but provides little reliable information.

There are many more executions that are not included in Amnesty’s global count, which is restricted to “judicial” executions — those that result from a formal trial process, whether or not that process meets international standards of fairness — and excludes some secret executions and those where no trial took place.

The 1,634 state killings — almost nine in 10 occurred in Iran, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia — represent a 50 percent increase over 2014. Explanations for the spike differ: Pakistan had not executed anyone since 2008, but reinstated the death penalty after the December 2014 terror attack on a military school in Peshawar that killed 132 children. Many of Pakistan’s 326 executions were for crimes other than terrorism.