Remarkable letters of death row killers revealed

[dogday]

Few would win any literary prizes; and none of the authors will get the chance to improve their writing. For these are the last statements of death row prisoners executed in Texas. Since 1982, all 376 prisoners killed by lethal injection at the busiest death chambers in the U.S. have had their final words recorded by wardens and diligently transcribed onto the Department of Criminal Justice's website.

What goes through the mind of a man (only three of the 376 were women) who knows he is about to die? For many it is a final chance to protest their innocence or rage against the system. Yet for others it is an opportunity to ask for forgiveness, to thank family members for their support or to declare their love.

And while some bear the rambling mark of terror ('I guess it only hurts for a little while,' says armed robber Dominique Green) most are surprisingly eloquent and devoid of self-pity.

Several, like Betty Lou Beets - convicted of killing her fifth husband and burying him under a flowerbed in the garden - offered no final words, and some confined themselves to a succinct 'I'm ready, warden'. But others spoke at length, quoting poems and Bible passages and sending greetings to hordes of their family and friends.


http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=406572&in_page_id=1766&ito=1490

[Scurrilous]

1. Link:

http://www.tdcj.state.tx.us/stat/executedoffenders.htm


Date of Execution: November 21, 1997

Offender: Charlie Livingston #802

Last Statement:

You all brought me here to be executed, not to make a speech.

That’s it.