Texas Records All Inmates Last Words Before Execution And Puts Them All Online | Hacker News Reader

Texas Records All Inmates Last Words Before Execution And Puts Them All Online

tdcj.texas.gov

114 pointsoptimalsolver271 comments

Hard to reconcile some of these last words with the reality of their crimes:

Juxtapose:

I was so glad to leave this world a better, more positive place. It’s not an easy life with all the negativities. ... I hope I left everyone a plate of food full of happy memories, happiness and no sadness. [0]

With this:

> On September 11, 1999, Jones murdered his great aunt, 83-year-old Berthena Bryant, bludgeoning her to death with a baseball bat. Afterwards, he stole her money in order to purchase some cocaine. [1]

[0] https://www.tdcj.texas.gov/death_row/dr_info/jonesquintinlas...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Execution_of_Quintin_Jones

The crime was when he was deeply addicted and drugged out of his mind 22 years earlier. I don't find it shocking that he's had another life since. Killing him in 2021 just seems so... pointless

From Wikipedia:

Jones experienced 'brutal conditions' during his childhood, suffering neglect by his parents, sexual assault by his siblings, and extreme poverty.[7][4][8] His mother threatened him with a gun, and when he was seven years old his older siblings forced him to have sex with his stepsister.[8] He shot himself twice, once in the hand to placate gang members and later in the chest in a suicide attempt. He became addicted to drugs by his early teens

Yes, contrast this with the bloodlust of The People. We are no so far aware from crucifixions, torture and the brutal death sentences in the circuses.

What this awful species, ad populum, calls justice is little more than a boderline erotic enjoyment of the torture of those "who deserve it".

The problem is that people struggle with non-binary thinking.

It is not only possible, but probable that this person who has suffered so much is also broken and an anti-social person.

Hey don't blame the species!

There’s something very odd to me about the modern progressive position that, more or less, if you can explain a crime, then you can in some sense excuse it.

That description of his childhood works for me in sociological terms — let’s avoid stuff that we know to create monsters — but not on individual ones (i.e. the monster, having been created, is indeed a monster).

The question is, do you blame the monster for being a monster? Or do you blame the people that made them one?

There are valid points both ways. IMO I think the idea is that if you can explain the crime then maybe the monster was created by society and thus can be redeemed by society. If you can't explain the crime, maybe the monster is just a monster.

>IMO I think the idea is that if you can explain the crime then maybe the monster was created by society and thus can be redeemed by society.

I think that might be the thought process, but I do not think it is very accurate. Some damage simply cant be undone, especially early childhood trauma and developmental damage.

Similarly, blame isn't binary, both can be true. If we have dispensed with the concept of free will, then nothing is to blame, neither society or the individual. It simply is.

Once you reach that point you have to ask, what is it, independent of the assignment of blame.

Are they a monster? Did they brutally murder 3 people?

As a materialist and a determinist I accept implicitly that everything has a cause and nobody is really responsible for anything, in some sense. But I find it’s pretty hard to actually live as though that’s true.

Taken to its logical conclusions: I’m not even responsible for my belief that he’s responsible, and so on.

My response to this materialist argument is that it essentially goes full circle.

Once everyone has no responsibility, you are just left with what are they and what did they do. Did they act like monster, independent of the upstream causality?

I try to apply the same logic to myself when I get into a deterministic ego trip.

The question of if I can choose to go the gym today is irrelevant. The relevant question is do I think I am a dedicated person who will go to the gym today. If I am are kind, loving, and charitable to myself, I find that the answer is "Yes, S1artibartfast is the kind of hard working person who would go to the gym".

It’s funny you say this, because it’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot recently. If you take the materialist position to its logical conclusion, then, in my view, instead of being exculpatory, you arrive back at an essentialist position.

Exactly my conclusion as well.

The interesting and challenging aspect of the essentialist position is understanding and believing in change. Past performance is not guarantee of future performance, even for the material determinist, as the world is not static.

Maybe you have never been to the gym, but today could be the first day. Ultimately, it doesn't matter what induced the change, but if you will fight it. In this way, I think that determinism is best paired with a optimistic and charitable perspective.

Most people have good intentions. I think that usually the biggest difference between those who act them out and those who don't is their essential optimism or pessimism. To that end, I try to encourage more optimism.

>There’s something very odd to me about the modern progressive position that, more or less, if you can explain a crime, then you can in some sense excuse it.

I'm not following here. Who, specifically, is claiming that those who commit crimes shouldn't be held accountable (prosecuted, incarcerated, etc.) for those crimes because they had a rough childhood/suffered abuse/etc? Please do name names.

As a mild example, just as being drunk is a reason for being obnoxious/nasty, it's not an excuse.

As a person who is somewhat to the left of what other Americans call "progressives," (who are center/leaning center-left), I don't think that understanding something makes everything okay or that crimes should be ignored because of negative stuff in the perpetrator's past. In fact, I've never heard anyone make such a claim.

Many folks (at least in the US, and I'm sure elsewhere too) have been abused by society and the legal system. And we should make every effort to combat that.

However, there absolutely are folks who should be removed from society, as they've shown they cannot live in a society without harming it and/or those within it. And those people should be kept apart from society -- for the protection of society.

>That description of his childhood works for me in sociological terms — let’s avoid stuff that we know to create monsters — but not on individual ones (i.e. the monster, having been created, is indeed a monster).

Seems like a good idea. But no one (AFAIK) is trying to "excuse" criminal behavior even as we try to understand the causes.

>Seems like a good idea. But no one (AFAIK) is trying to "excuse" criminal behavior even as we try to understand the causes.

I think the knee jerk response would be about perspectives on poverty and class, but I think the more interesting response is that the criminal justice system already takes causes into account.

Provoked Crimes of Passion are treated differently than premeditated ones. Questions of mental capacity are relevant to sentencing. We have things like the twinkie defense and temporary insanity. We have Justified homicide due to self-defense.

In reality, the justice system almost always takes causes into account. Just not all causes. The interesting question is why some but not others.

>In reality, the justice system almost always takes causes into account. Just not all causes. The interesting question is why some but not others.

Absolutely. Circumstances are usually relevant and should be examined.

But GP[0] claimed that "progressives" argue that understanding the causes for the commission of crimes should "excuse" those actions.

Which is an unsupported assertion and I reject it because, at least AFAIK, no one takes that position.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34317453

Edit: Added the missing link, cleaned up prose.

There’s a kind of thing that happens in these discussions where somebody makes a complaint about an extremist position and somebody else responds that nobody thinks that and the two are kind of talking past one another.

To be clear, I acknowledge that we’re talking about an extreme, broadly unpopular position, but it is one running through certain segments of leftish twitter and academia. (No, I don’t keep a file of such utterances, so I can’t produce a list offhand.)

>To be clear, I acknowledge that we’re talking about an extreme, broadly unpopular position, but it is one running through certain segments of leftish twitter and academia. (No, I don’t keep a file of such utterances, so I can’t produce a list offhand.)

That's as may be, but lots of people say lots of stupid/ridiculous/untrue things all the time.

Who, in a position of power or influence (or reasonably adjacent to such power/influence), advocates such a view?

I can say all sorts of things, ranging from the mundane ("I like coffee.") to the ridiculous ("There is an underground advance alien invasion base under Biscayne Bay."). And while that does mean I will make coffee for myself tomorrow morning, it most certainly doesn't mean that the Army Corps of Engineers will be planting nukes in Biscayne Bay to destroy those evil aliens.

And it doesn't matter how many times I say it or to whom I say it, the Army Corps of Engineers aren't going to nuke Biscayne Bay. And no one should pay any attention to such ramblings.

And so I have to ask, why are you giving credence to (as you readily state) what some unbalanced rando thinks about prosecuting crime. And not just giving such credence, you also claimed that such views were those of "progressives."

You're now walking that back, but you (and that's what I responded to) implied that "excusing" criminal acts was somehow a "progressive" position.

It is not, and never has been.

There are those who claim that certain government officials routinely abduct babies and small children in order to murder them and extract some hormone to make them live longer.

Overwhelmingly, at least in the US, the folks who make (and/or believe -- not the same thing) such claims almost exclusively supported one political party over another.

Does that mean that everyone who supports that political party (or even a a tiny fraction) also believes such things?

By your logic, the answer should be "yes." Is that correct?

I could give a host of other examples of other ridiculous tropes from the extremes. None of which have support from anyone with or near any real power.

The upshot is that I took issue with you (specifically you, dionidium) smearing a broad group of folks (progressives) with a broad brush, claiming that an extreme stance by folks who may or may not consider themselves part of that group is the default belief of a group.

That's a clear example of "othering"[0], in which you are attempting to besmirch folks with beliefs they do not hold.

If you'd instead said something like "some extremist positions claim that people shouldn't be prosecuted for crimes if they had a bad childhood," I would have heartily agreed.

But "othering" has no place in reasoned discourse. Don't like progressives? I'm sure you can find stuff that's actually true to beat up on them. But just making shit up is low effort and doesn't add to the discussion.

[0] https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-othering-5084425

Edit: Added the missing link.

> * Does that mean that everyone who supports that political party (or even a a tiny fraction) also believes such things? By your logic, the answer should be "yes." Is that correct?*

I think the source of the conflict here is that, no, this does not follow. The position I described is distinctly progressive in nature, on the opposite end of the spectrum from a belief that one might characterize as conservative. That does not imply that everybody who identifies as progressive believes it.

>I think the source of the conflict here is that, no, this does not follow. The position I described is distinctly progressive in nature, on the opposite end of the spectrum from a belief that one might characterize as conservative. That does not imply that everybody who identifies as progressive believes it.

No. The source of the "conflict," as you describe (I call it a spirited conversation, but whatever blows your skirt up) is that you made an unsupported assertion (that the "progressive" position is that people with bad childhoods shouldn't be prosecuted for crimes they go on to commit), and I asked for specific information as to who, exactly, claims that to be not only their position, but that of progressives in general.

You danced around that very specific request and then somewhat backed off your (ridiculous) assertion.

And no, you didn't say "it's a progressive position," you said[0]:

   There’s something very odd to me about the modern
   progressive position that, more or less, if you can
   explain a crime, then you can in some sense excuse
   it.

Not "a progressive postion," which is debatable at best, you called it "the progressive position" implying that was the belief of most who call themselves "progressive."

That's simply not true. Nor has it ever been.

And I called you out on your wholly unsupported, unsubstantiated and flat wrong assertion.

You are seemingly trying to walk back your statement and chalk it up to "conflict."

No. I'm not in conflict with you at all. You may think you're in conflict with me, but I'm just here trying to have good faith discussions.

You might try it some time.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34317453

Edit: clarified my prose.

> Not "a progressive position," which is debatable at best, you called it "the progressive position" implying that was the belief of most who call themselves "progressive."

I am actually the world's foremost expert on what I mean when I say something. If we ever have a debate about what I meant, then I am 100% correct and you are 100% incorrect. You can ask me to clarify something, but only I know what I meant.

Quoting somebody's words back to them as if to say, "but but but you said this!" is basically never useful, because you're always talking to the preeminent scholar on what that person meant and you should only ever be in the posture of accepting what they tell you they meant by those words.

If there appears to be some confusion about what I meant, then I am, as one former president so eloquently put it, "the decider."

By the way, since you seem to be so interested in how to have "good faith" debates, you should know that violating this principle is a classic bad-faith arguing tactic that's basically guaranteed to derail a conversation (just as it's done here).

>If we ever have a debate about what I meant, then I am 100% correct and you are 100% incorrect.

You are the person others perceive you to be, at least as far as they're concerned. Perhaps that's something to keep in mind when you're attempting to share your thoughts.

And that's the last I'll say on the matter.

Have a nice day.

> That description of his childhood works for me in sociological terms — let’s avoid stuff that we know to create monsters — but not on individual ones (i.e. the monster, having been created, is indeed a monster).

Can you elaborate on this

this is sickening. makes me not want to move to the US. that, and mass killings without gun law changes, & health insurance letting people die or bankrupt, even if I wouldn't have that problem myself

Is it less pointless to keep him in jail for the rest of his life?

To be fair. The decades of stays that separate his crime from his punishment were his choice.

“On 12/15/98, at approximately 8:30 a.m., Mathis shot three victims in the head with a .45 caliber pistol at a known drug house in Fort Bend County, Texas. One of the victims, a 15-year-old Hispanic female survived the shooting, paralyzed from the chest down. Mathis reportedly turned the gun on two other intended victims, however, when he attempted to pull the trigger, the gun either misfired or had been jammed.”

“Yes, sir. I just want to say to all my supporters, family and friends; I love y'all and appreciate y'all. To the ones representing me today, thank you for everything. The system has failed me. This is a miscarriage of justice. There are people on death row that need help. I love my family. I love you too, Mom. I am alright. I asked the Lord to have mercy on me and I hope He has mercy on these people carrying out this mass slaughter. They have no respect for humanity. To Melanie, I never meant to hurt you. You were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. I am not asking for your forgiveness. All I have to worry about is God forgiving me. I hope you get better and for the doctors to continue to take care of you. Take care of my mother for me. To everybody, know that I love you and I am OK. Lord, have mercy on my soul. Lord, have mercy on my soul. Lord, have mercy on these peoples' soul. Life is not supposed to end this way. No more pain and frustration. When I knock at the gates, they will open up and let me in. To my mom and everybody, I love you. I can feel it right now. My life, my life.”

Interesting seeing the visualization someone else linked that “love” was the most common word.

This person used the word love 4 times, while simultaneously denying his responsibility and saying that it’s the rest of the world that’s bad.

He lived in extreme poverty, was neglected by his parents, got sexually assaulted by his siblings and was forced to have sex with his stepsister when he was seven. He shot himself twice, once trying to kill himself. The world he lived in was bad.

GP is talking about Mathis Milton. You're quoting a wikipedia article about Quintin Jones. Obviously, they are not the same person.

Whoops my mistake. I’ll try to make my point with Mathis Milton as well:

“Milton dropped out of school after the 8th grade and worked as a cook, mechanic’s helper, and laborer before his arrest. Milton abused alcohol and drugs as a teenager.”

In another article he was being referred to as having “low IQ”. Combined with the fact that the murders happened in a crack house, I infer that he probably lived in a similar environment and had a comparable upbringing and childhood.

What does that have to do with the killer not taking any responsibility, accusing other people of lacking humanity and saying to a victim that she was just "at the wrong place at the wrong time" with 0 other admission of guilt? I get that we could maybe, maybe stretch the argument that he had a rough upbringing (though dropping out of school isn't that extreme) to "explain" the circumstances of the crime... but not that he was basically still seemingly remorseless after having decades in death row to reflect on his acts.

He does show signs of remorse: “To Melanie, I never meant to hurt you.”

With regards to the guilt question: I did make the honest mistake of misquoting the history of another inmate before, what stands out to me and what I wanted to point out: I don’t think it is a coincidence that both of those inmates grew up in an environment of poverty. We do have the specifics of what happened in childhood in the first case, the second one I can only infer from the fact of teenage drug use and of growing up in a certain environment, which are both things I would expect to have a high correlation with childhood trauma.

This is not to say that Milton is not guilty of a crime, in the legal sense. But to expect someone who has been beaten, abused and has gotten the short end of the stick all their life to take full individual responsibility for something he didn’t have a choice in does seem inhumane to me. In a way like Melanie, he was at the wrong place at the wrong time.

And what purpose would such an admission of guilt serve? Would it take make it easier to believe that tragedies like this are fully the individuals responsibility and that the environment the individual grows up in has no influence on the outcomes?

I don't dispute that Milton's life growing up was probably tough, but your comment upthread is making specific factual claims (e.g., that he was raped by his sister/siblings), which are to the best of our knowledge not true (because you confused the subject of the thread). We should avoid making false statements.

And? That describes lots of people who don't go out and commit heinous crimes.

Lol now you guys are literally just guessing about “how bad he had it” to justify the sociopathy

That's a different person, although his world was probably not much better.

is it so hard to believe that someone who spends 20 years in prison might have recognized their mistakes, and set out to do as much good as they can within their constraints?

Is almost as if they were partially rehabilitated.

I've seen a number of these things and can only come to one conclusion. Most of the people on death row are deeply mentally ill. The state is effectively using prison in place of mental health facilities.

For instance the person you are quoting also mentions friends and family in his final words. Yet he writes his final words specifically to the warden. This does not seem congruent with a sound mind. More like he is mentally unable to connect relationships and really has no frends or family and the warden is the closest thing to a authority/parental figure he has.

I could easily be wrong in my intrepretation.

You're assuming that mental illness is something that can be cured, and that the cure is not equivalent or worse than killing them.

Quite frankly, our brains are plastic, but not that plastic. It's possible (and we don't know enough about brain structure to say for certain either way) that someone can get into an antisocial enough state that it's impossible, by ethical means, to retrain them, to get them out of that state.

On a motherboard, if you flash your bios wrong you can pull the flash ROM and replace it with a new one. Brains are integrated packages and you can only reprogram them by their IO interfaces, and their IO interfaces are shut down or stuck in a boot loop, or simply running such a hardened update mechanism that any attempt to update the firmware simply adds your attempt to a blacklist and removes the interface you attempted to use.

This analogy is incredibly weak: Human minds are not computers. Put another way: Someone, particularly those on death row, might be so recalcitrant and antisocial that any (ethical) attempt to teach them teaches the opposite reaction, either from spite or from hate. You reward them for good behavior and they make an active attempt not to do that anymore to spite you. You punish them for bad behavior and it only reinforces their hate for you. You do the opposite, rewarding bad behavior and punishing the good, you're making negative progress.

Alternatively, imagine that you have invented a miracle drug that can render a brain fully plastic; Rewrite it to your whim. Is it ever ethical to use such a drug? I say no. It is an unacceptable moral hazard to ever use such a drug. The act of killing is a loss for both parties; Obviously more for the killed, but it is a deep scar that the killer bears, too. Taking on that scar is sometimes worth it. If you were to simply reprogram, from scratch, your convicts into wonderful (or even simply acceptable) people, you would have turned that around. There would be something to gain from "personality death-row". Making it socially acceptable to forcibly reprogram your opponents and feel good about it is a dystopia greater than any that a sci-fi writer has written, and I'm sure many have tried and not gotten the full horrors that it would unleash.

Damn that's a lot of words to just say you're fine with killing mentally ill people.

You know the guy that shot Reagan, John Warnock Hinckley Jr. He just got released from a secure psych facility. He shot the president and then got treated for being crazy. As a response, the conservatives in the 80's defunded public psych work and increased funding for prisons.

The death penalty is a cruel policy choice. Nothing more than that.

This is almost comical revisionism. It's been weird to watch this narrative take its shape throughout the years though.

It's a lot older policy choice than Hinckley so maaaayyybe a little more to it.

That doesn't sound like someone particularly mentally ill. Just your common dark triad who can't take responsibility for his actions.

That doesn't explain why you would write your final words to the person imprisoning you rather than the supposed family and friends mentioned in the last words. Why not more than one letter, if you have family AND friends.

Seems to me like the warden is the only significant real person in their life and they lack the ability to distinguish relationships. I'm not a psychologist so just an observation.

Could be, but I hesitate to say that suggests he's deeply mentally ill. It seems pretty natural that one would develop a relationship with the warden. His position is somewhat paternalistic, if you think about it. Long-time wardens may not be a thing so much any more but they used to be a trope in American mythology. Death row inmates don't tend to be as violent as gen pop in prisons; that would obviate reasons for the wardens to be severe with them.

Another way of looking at is that 22 years ago he did a terrible thing that he thought he would never do and has regretted ever since. This does not absolve him of shit, but:

We then collectively, as a society, took 22 years to murder him back.

Are we going to claim we did it as a mistake? Is ours a crime of passion? What excuse do we have for our violence? "He did it first"?

So I find it hard to reconcile that we are living in modern, democratic, freedom-loving countries, and the best we could come up with in response to murder was more murder.

When we kill inmates, we torture them for decades with the knowledge that they will be murdered for their crimes and it will hurt. We deprive them of all freedom in the meantime. Decades of knowing that society as a whole hates you so much that they locked you away out of sight and want your blood. We then surround them with the most violent people we have in society, and offer them little protection from each other.

And then finally, one day, if they survive the ordeal, we kill them and call it justice. That's what I have a hard time reconciling.

This is such a foolish way of looking at public order. The point is not whether murder is wrong or whether punishing is wrong, because after all we are not children arguing about right and wrong. Rather, we need a public that is free of murderers and so when people engage in antisocial behavior we remove them from the public. We don't remove someone for X years because we think they "deserve" to be removed for X years -- we remove them for X years because that's how it takes them to age out of being prone to commit acts of more violence.

It is about keeping society going. The moment you start getting into debates about right and wrong, you prove that you have no interest in keeping society going and are instead focused on making yourself feel good by making various philosophical pronouncements which are ultimately quite arbitrary. But what is not arbitrary is whether people can walk the streets safely at night or not. Do we live in a peaceful society or do we live in a society in which the wealthy barricade themselves in and hire private security while the poor are left to fend for themselves? That's what matters, and it's all that matters, because public justice is not an ethics class, it's a class about how to create safe streets so that society can continue to function in peace.

The moment you stop caring about how to create a peaceful society, what you get is a violent society that eventually disintegrates into warring clans and someone will rise to the top who can promise order, and he will not care a bit about your philosophical debates. And the people will support him, because not worrying about being attacked as you walk about the city is a required part of having cities in the first place. And we want cities, we want high density living in which strangers can interact with each other without violence -- we want civilization. Therefore we adopt policies that defend that civilization independent of any musings about who has the right to take a life or imprison someone and what that means for someone's soul, etc. It is only those people who take it for granted that they are living in a peaceful society, who are able to engage in these musings about what is right and wrong. But God help the society that takes them seriously or listens to their advice.

> Rather, we need a public that is free of murderers and so when people engage in antisocial behavior we remove them from the public.

Sure. There’s a wide gap between how Texas and Norway accomplish that.

I find your philosophy appalling and terrifying and I hope you never hold office.

You're right, they've suffered a terrible injustice. They are the real victims. We should probably free all violent criminals at once. What could go wrong?

Depends on what he did between the crime and death.

I'm not familiar with the specifics of this case, and I'm not excusing any crimes, but it is certainly possible to commit serious crimes, and yet be able to say what he did.

No one also knows how it felt like to be him. Again, not to excuse any crimes, but a lot of people suffer horribly in silence until they snap.

Hasn't the Innocence Project saved a non-trivial amount of people from death row?

The sad thing is a percentage of these last words are made by innocent people. The US justice system isn't perfect, not even close.

Dare I say I find it rather comforting to know these people no longer walk the earth.

https://www.tdcj.texas.gov/death_row/dr_info/obryanronald.jp... https://www.tdcj.texas.gov/death_row/dr_info/garrettjohnny.j... https://www.tdcj.texas.gov/death_row/dr_info/wootenlarry.htm...

>Dare I say I find it rather comforting to know these people no longer walk the earth.

And if, next week, evidence is found that one or more of those folks didn't commit the crimes for which they were convicted -- are you still going to be comforted by their deaths?

I'd say that being in prison serves essentially the same purpose, had those folks not been executed, they'd be in prison and that's enough comfort for me.

Isn't that enough "comfort" for you?

That's not a jab at you. Rather, I'd like to understand why you feel that simply removing such folks from society (i.e., a long prison sentence) isn't sufficient, and death is the correct response?

Is there something I'm missing?

> Isn't that enough "comfort" for you?

No, it isn't. There is a certain peace and relief seeing these individuals brought to death. I don't mean to come across as provocative. To think of someone like Anders Breivik living in relative comfort after the atrocity he committed, it's simply absurd.

>No, it isn't. There is a certain peace and relief seeing these individuals brought to death. I don't mean to come across as provocative. To think of someone like Anders Breivik living in relative comfort after the atrocity he committed, it's simply absurd.

So it's retribution, not accountability or the safety of society that interests you?

But if we go with your preference, while Anders Breivik might suffer the same as those he murdered, these guys[0] (among many, many others) would have been murdered (and incorrectly so) for no reason other than the desire to satisfy your (and that of others, not singling you out per se, although you did express that belief) desire for revenge and retribution -- even if those murdered by the state didn't actually commit such a crime.

I consider Blackstone's Formulation[1] to be much more appropriate.

And I'd also say that being confined for the rest of your life, even in a dull, but comfortable environment meets the need for the safety of society and the need for accountability to the law.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Park_jogger_case

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackstone%27s_ratio

"Live, laugh, love"

Just because someone was convicted of a crime it doesn't mean they committed the crime. In the case you quoted above who knows, but certainly there are a few wrongful convictions in there. A really barbaric system.

>but certainly there are a few wrongful convictions in there.

And that's the best argument against capital punishment.

A wrongful conviction with a long (life+$X years) sentence allows for wrongful convictions to not only be reversed, but then the wrongfully convicted can be released, hopefully with some restitution.

If someone is wrongly convicted and executed, there's no useful recourse.

If someone is correctly convicted of a heinous crime, keeping them off the streets is effective enough to stop them from committing such crimes in our society. What's more, I'd say that decades in a 10x10 box is much worse than the sweet release of death in a few years.

I imagine some folks would disagree with that assessment, but that's how I see it.

If it turns out later (cf. The Exonerated Five[1]) that they're not actually guilty and we'd heeded the rantings of some people[2], they would likely have been murdered by the state for a crime they didn't commit. How is that fair or appropriate?

Sadly, we seem to have forgotten about Blackstone's Formulation[0] here in the US. And more's the pity.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackstone%27s_ratio

[1] https://www.history.com/topics/1980s/central-park-five

[2] https://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/ny-news-trump-death-pen...

Edit: Corrected prose.

> A wrongful conviction with a long (life+$X years) sentence allows for wrongful convictions to not only be reversed, but then the wrongfully convicted can be released, hopefully with some restitution.

If you've locked someone up for half their lifespan, even in much better conditions than US prisons, even millions wouldn't make up for that, and I doubt we give them millions. Execution takes away someone's whole life, but that's not such a huge step change compared to taking away a substantial portion of their years. We should take false imprisonment just as seriously.

“First I would like to say I have been here since September 2005. I had the honor and privilege to know many prison guards and staff. I want to thank all of them. I would like for everyone to write the people on death row as they are all good men and I am very happy I got to know them. All of their lives are worth knowing about.

Secondly on February 14th the medical examiner and the chief nurse were engaged in numerous false illegal acts. They tried to cover up that thousands were wrongfully convicted by Matt Powell, district attorney. This needs to be brought to justice.

I call upon the FBI to investigate Matt Powell and the Lubbock County Medical Examiner. Lastly, I was born and raised Catholic and it was not lost upon me that this is Holy Week and last Sunday was Palm Sunday. Yesterday was my birthday. Today is the day I join my God and father. The state may have my body but not my soul.

In order to save my brothers on death row I call upon Pope Francis and all the people of the world.

Lastly, I want everyone to boycott every single business in the state of Texas until all the businesses are pressed to stop the death penalty.

With that Lord I commend my spirit.

Warden I am ready to join my father.”

For context, this speaker was convicted of raping, beating, and murdering a pregnant woman and a teenage girl.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosendo_Rodriguez

And?

Does his harming of another mean that he can't be harmed and he can't speak truth to try and save people who would be harmed in the future?

Do you have the same thoughts about confidential informants, police that go under cover or individuals that turn State's Evidence? Committing a crime == "they're liars and never speak truth"?

For context, no one thought they were on death row for handing out daisies.

Well, maybe for feeding cats.

He didn't say anything about his victims or their families.

Maybe he felt his absolute last words on Earth could be about something other than the worst thing he ever did. Is that so hard to relate to?

I read something like this and am reminded that many people in prison for violent crime are sociopaths or psychopaths. I'm not saying there aren't exceptions or even innocent convicts. It's just not the norm. Hard to take anything these guys say at face value.

The comments he made about the medical examiner's office aren't exactly empty comments. It wasn't hard to find this information, so consider googling before being so dismissive with comments like yours.

The FBI ended up raiding the medical examiner's office in 2019: https://www.newschannel10.com/2019/09/24/texas-rangers-fbi-u...

Whistleblower lawsuit: https://www.kcbd.com/story/29837207/lubbock-county-medical-e...

  “We have evidence of tampering with government documents, backdating of autopsy reports, in an apparent attempt to try to make them look as if they were done on a timely basis. We have alteration of Dr. Florez’s reports without her knowledge, and re-signing of those reports by Dr. Natarajan. Dr. Natarajan delegated a large amount of authority to his nurse, his head nurse, and allowed her essentially to practice medicine, to make decisions that only he and the Deputy Medical Examiner were allowed to make, by law,” said Kerensky."

Unlicensed autopsies of children: https://www.kcbd.com/2019/02/20/lawsuit-former-lubbock-medic...

  “He (Matshes) made one comment multiple times that literally made me sick. He said, ‘Oh you should have seen a case I was consulting on as a second opinion not long ago and by the time I was through with that autopsy, you could take what was left of that baby and put it in a cup.' He seemed to enjoy that statement, and it just turned my stomach and everyone else’s that heard it too," Graves said.

Two year backlog of autopsies from 2021: https://www.everythinglubbock.com/news/local-news/autopsies-...

Investigation into autopsy backlog going back to 2018: https://www.kcbd.com/2018/11/20/kcbd-investigates-exclusive-...

Review of the medical examiner's office, with claims of alcoholism on the job, accepting bribes to change autopsy results, and using government resources to fund his ME's private practice: https://media.everythinglubbock.com/nxsglobal/everythinglubb...

I wasn't saying he's lying or not lying, just that it's hard to take what someone in this position says at face value. When considering the words of an inmate on death row (or prison more generally), it's natural to feel sympathy and to act as if the person is sincere and just like most people if not for his unfortunate circumstances.

But it's also the case that many people in that position are habitual liars. One can quibble over the reasons but it's just something that has to be taken into account. I'm reminded of that fact when I read something that seems to be pretty straightforward. A sane person would think sincerity especially likely in one's considered final words. An experienced person would laugh at such an absurdity.

HN is a funny place. For such a smart pool of commenters in other respects, people here tend not to be very attentive or psychologically nuanced readers. I'm often surprised how quickly y'all resort to scolding without even understanding someone's point.

Let me show you what I read in this man's final words:

>>> First I would like to say I have been here since September 2005. I had the honor and privilege to know many prison guards and staff. I want to thank all of them. I would like for everyone to write the people on death row as they are all good men and I am very happy I got to know them. All of their lives are worth knowing about.

That sounds nice but also quite proud. Fine, he's not particularly sorry about his crime, if you even want to call it that. It was all in the distant past anyway, so why make a fuss about it. There's no one left alive who really cared about the old woman anyway, so it would be pointless to apologize "to all the people I hurt". That sort of victimolotry would ring false anyway (unless it's a victim of the state), so point in his favor for honesty. Hmm, I wonder what else he's telling the truth about.

He says the people on death row are all "good men" and he's "very happy" he got to know them. That's pretty interesting and contrary to intuition. Most of us would be very unhappy to spend decades around violent criminals. A charitable interpretation is that he's made close friendships over time and is generally loyal. But many have said you can know a man by his friends, so it also suggests bad judgment or, perhaps, a tendency to narcissistic splitting. His statement definitely isn't concerned with their crimes or guilt.

>>> Secondly on February 14th the medical examiner and the chief nurse were engaged in numerous false illegal acts. They tried to cover up that thousands were wrongfully convicted by Matt Powell, district attorney. This needs to be brought to justice. I call upon the FBI to investigate Matt Powell and the Lubbock County Medical Examiner.

Whoa, that's weird. He expresses no concern for crimes committed by his fellow inmates but does want to point out the malfeasance of the state. This makes a kind of sense, whether it's true or not. I do wonder how much he knows about this. Does he know a lot because he was claiming this as part of his appeal and he believes he is innocent? Is that credible? Does the fact of malfeasance mean the crimes weren't committed or only that civil rights of criminals (due process) were violated?

If he's been claiming he's innocent all these years, it would explain why he doesn't mention his conviction in his last words. But again, what was the evidence of his innocence or guilt? If the evidence is reasonable that he is, in fact, guilty then he's carrying his lie to the grave. That'd be interesting, no?

It's also interesting that he's using his "platform" to call attention to this issue, ostensibly to save innocent men (like him?) from wrongful conviction. Maybe he is innocent. I don't know. They say all men in prison are innocent. Or maybe he's guilty and has been lying about it for so long that he's lost connection to reality. Or maybe he's knowingly lying to the bitter end. Questions to be asked...

>>> Lastly, I was born and raised Catholic and it was not lost upon me that this is Holy Week and last Sunday was Palm Sunday. Yesterday was my birthday. Today is the day I join my God and father. The state may have my body but not my soul. In order to save my brothers on death row I call upon Pope Francis and all the people of the world.

Now this is interesting. A black man in Texas raised Catholic is a rarity. He's got some pretty overt martyrdom symbolism going on here. His birthday is coinciding with Holy Week? If you're not familiar here's the significance:

"Palm Sunday commemorates the entrance of Christ into Jerusalem, when palm branches were placed in his path, before his arrest on Holy Thursday and his crucifixion on Good Friday. It thus marks the beginning of Holy Week, the final week of Lent." (Wikipedia)

Maybe that's just copium but he isn't much of a theologian if he is, in fact, guilty, as that would require confession and repentance to save his soul. If he doesn't do that part, the state would still have his body, but God would be sending his soul to hell. Maybe he confessed elsewhere with his priest and chose not to repeat his confession publicly. That's his right. Still, it raises suspicions about his state of mind and his character. Similarly, his call upon Pope Francis doesn't make much sense. Francis already issued a bull against the death penalty. Even so, as a Catholic, he would know the pope isn't needed to save the souls of his "brothers on death row", only a confession and repentance before an ordained priest. And as a Catholic so close to death, he would also know that is the only "saving" that would help them. The last thing that would help them is to be affirmed in false protestations of innocence. So, again, what's he thinking? He surely knows that most of the "good men" on death row did commit their crimes. And that most of the "good men" on death row are claiming innocence. If anything, as a Catholic he should be calling upon his "brothers on death row" to confess their crimes and repent before a priest. But that's not what he's doing. Why?

>>> Lastly, I want everyone to boycott every single business in the state of Texas until all the businesses are pressed to stop the death penalty.

Based on other things he said, I believe he is mentally coherent, but this statement makes little sense. Businesses don't execute convicts, the state does. This call to action would punish all people in Texas regardless of their support for the death penalty. Why would he want to do that? Faith, hope, and charity are the cardinal Catholic virtues. It's not very charitable to punish the innocent. If he is himself innocent, then why would he want to punish other innocents? Is he acting in a spirit of resentment? I don't know. But it makes me wonder about the degree of his sincerity. It would make more sense if he was calling upon the people of Texas to end the death penalty in order to save their own souls. But he doesn't say that.

(As an aside, the history of the Catholic position on the death penalty is pretty long and the period after the 1970s is unique in its opposition to the death penalty. The catechism wasn't officially revised until 2018, so this is a pretty recent thing. Is it coincidental that the changes track pretty well with the rise of "Liberation Theology"? I don't know. Pope Benedict XVI was no liberationist but he was also on record advocating abolition, so there's that.)

>>> With that Lord I commend my spirit. Warden I am ready to join my father.”

Not trying to be harsh but if he's a Catholic and he's guilty and he hasn't confessed and repented and there is a God and the Catholic faith is correct, then he's going straight to hell.

So, I hope that clarifies the spirit of my parent comment, which was a lament about the lack of trust created by the commission of crimes. I'm not digging into his case, just pointing out that, to an attentive reader, there's a lot to unpack in this short statement.

  Now this is interesting. A black man in Texas raised Catholic is a rarity. He's got some pretty overt martyrdom symbolism going on here. His birthday is coinciding with Holy Week? If you're not familiar here's the significance

I stopped reading here. He wasn't black. Again, you should attempt to do some basic research before you make assumptions about people you know nothing about.

That's an honest mistake. There are several links floating around in the HN parent thread and quotes without attribution. I mistakenly thought we were talking about this man linked above: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Execution_of_Quintin_Jones

Turns out we're actually talking about this fine gentleman? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosendo_Rodriguez

I was mildly sympathetic to the first guy, who only killed his great aunt. This guy killed two young prostitutes, one pregnant, the other 16 years old. Confessed to the crimes, the. Spent 20 years trying to get off on a technicality. Nice guy. Really going to take his last words at face value.

It would have been more interesting to learn about someone with an unusual background (black catholic texan) and whether that played a role in his story, but it's an incidental aside to my argument about catholicism. Those arguments stand. Do me the honor of reading them.

Thanks for correcting my mistake, though. This guy is even more suspicious in his appeals to catholicism and his lack of public repentance. His unmentioned victims even more glaring tells than an old dead aunt. Not as curious, not a rarity, but even more "damning".

To your point, I do know one important thing about this person: He was executed for a capital crime. That's a pretty significant fact. I'm not obligated to learn much more about him to make assumptions about the truth value of his last words. I may be wrong in my suspicions, but my point was that I don't have to go digging into the details of every inmate's case to be suspicious of their claims. It's the sensible default stance. All liars say true things.

If you don't want to address the psychological substance of my argument that's your prerogative but nothing about googling a specific felon is going to change a justified bias against taking their claims at face value. Innocent until proven guilty, ok. Presumed innocent after found guilty? No way.

Hey man, all I'm saying is that if you did some diligence before you posted a mountain of bleedingly ironic text, you wouldn't need to try to defend some pretty racist looking shit. Take it as a lesson and move on.

Thank you for the lesson, but I'm not exactly clear on what was racist-looking about my text. Please explain if you can, I would like to know so I can avoid unintentional apparent racism. Was it pointing out the rarity of black texan catholics? I never considered that noticing something unusual about someone is racist. Was it clicking the wrong link above and not realizing I had the wrong murderer? As you say, I should have read more about the personal history of the person and then crosschecked his final words with the parent comment. But that would be against the spirit of my whole argument. Something else?

It very much looked like you were assuming the person was black because of their conviction. Ignoring the appearance of racism, it also completely voided everything you wrote because you were talking about the wrong person, making it all effectively meaningless.

Just putting this out there: I once worked with a man who, when he was 17 and in a gang, shot and killed another man execution-style. He spent a long time in prison. He was also the most humble person I've ever worked with, who had a genuine understanding of who he was and what he did, and had an undeniably deep appreciation of the second chance he was given. Try to consider that your feelings and thoughts towards people who do bad things spills over into characterizations of other people. These days, as part of my job, I talk with a lot of people who, for example, have spent years in jail and found not guilty of crimes they were accused of. Their lives were ruined. Not just because of the time they lost and all that comes with that, but also because of the apathetic cruelty that was inflicted on them during their time in jail. It's absolutely heart-wrenching. The way you speak, by minimizing people you don't know and never will, reminds me of the people I've talked to on the side of the jail who calmly rationalize their own cruelty.

Anywho, have a good life.

I can see why you thought that but, no, I was assuming he was black because I followed the link for a different person.

I hate to beat a dead horse about this or to seem to contradict your experience; I can and do have sympathy for many people in prison. But you're attacking a straw man. My observation was about my response to final words by death row inmates in general. If you're saying there are exceptions to the rule that violent offenders in prison are often liars with behavioral pathologies, then sure, of course. If you're saying that's not a general heuristic one should have when encountering the claims of violent offenders on death row, I disagree. In my opinion, it's an especially useful heuristic for people who don't express any remorse for their victims, as in the quoted example. It makes no difference to the point you rushed in to correct me about, i.e., that a simple google search would void my argument. Maybe I won't seem so heartless to you if you consider that my sympathies are more with the victims of violent crime rather than the perpetrators. I used to think more along the lines of you and most people on HN. When I started to investigate the subject and think it through, my opinions changed quite a bit. Thanks for the debate. Good luck to you.

  Whoa, that's weird. He expresses no concern for crimes committed by his fellow inmates but does want to point out the malfeasance of the state. This makes a kind of sense, whether it's true or not. I do wonder how much he knows about this. Does he know a lot because he was claiming this as part of his appeal and he believes he is innocent? Is that credible? Does the fact of malfeasance mean the crimes weren't committed or only that civil rights of criminals (due process) were violated?

okay one last thing. Yes, in an appeal before the state killed him, they raised the issue that the medical examiner's office made an error, which seems pretty plausible considering everything that happened. If they won that appeal, then he would still be alive. He wasn't saying that he was fully innocent, just that the set of charges would have been different such that he wouldn't be on death row. So no, it's not weird for him to bring it up or to have an understanding of that office. His life literally depended on it. Your heuristics have lead you to bad assumptions.

I was amused by the Texan racial categories: White, Black, Hispanic, Other

Spot checking a handful of statements, it seems like most people executed found God, peace, and remorse at the end.

Though at least one person never stopped proclaiming innocence:

> I’m not the one that killed Christina, so whatever makes ya’ll happy.

I wonder how many on the list were, in fact, innocent.

That's my biggest issue with capital punishment. You can't take it back, if you're wrong you just killed someone's child, parent, sibling, or combination thereof.

While being sentenced to years of prison for a crime you didn't commit is also horrible, you can at the very least be released if you're found innocent.

AND the search for the real perpetrator can begin again. If an innocent is executed for a crime they didn't commit what are the odds that anyone will be bothered to look for any more evidence ever again? It effectively ends the search for justice.

The current process is a middle ground. Stay on death row for decades to ultimately be executed (after likelihood of being found innocent is extremely small).

I like the idea of capital punishment because I don't want to pay to keep murderers alive for decades. I feel like the bigger issue is, and what pushes me to think twice on the issue, people get found guilty of murder "without a reasonable doubt" on purely circumstantial evidence and on crappy "eye witness" testimony (people can feel certain they saw something they absolutely did not.)

If I were a juror, that wouldn't cut it for me. I'd need pretty hard evidence to give someone the death sentence. If that hard evidence was there, why give them room and board for 20 years before the execution? It's a total waste of money and further drag on society beyond the crime committed.

> I don't want to pay to keep murderers alive for decades

According to the California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice[0], “The additional cost of confining an inmate to death row, as compared to the maximum security prisons where those sentenced to life without possibility of parole ordinarily serve their sentences, is $90,000 per year per inmate. With California’s current death row population of 670, that accounts for $63.3 million annually.”

[0, pdf warning]: https://www.leg.state.nv.us/App/NELIS/REL/76th2011/ExhibitDo...

This, to me, is a profoundly disturbing comment that presumes a level of competence and positive intent within the American criminal justice system that is provably absent.

I always liked the Boston Bombing example.

Should the Boston bombers [1] receive the death penalty? A lot of arguments against the death penalty are that for many cases you can't actually be sure the person who committed the crime is actually the one convicted. So in those situations I don't think its appropriate it (i.e almost every death penalty case). However, something like the Boston bombing it's really beyond any reasonable doubt.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_Marathon_bombing

What? No, why do you like this example? There is nothing special about this case that makes his guilt any more "certain" than any other case. Confessions have been proven to be shit, physical evidence is disturbingly often faked, eyewitnesses are among the least reliable sources of information possible, etc.

The American criminal justice system is designed to reach conclusions, and explicitly not designed to be accurate. That is no system upon which a capital punishment should ever be applied.

I would argue the Boston bombing is a great example of why we shouldn't execute people. He is clearly a disturbed person who needs help, not death.

I think that's my point. I like the idea of it but most times I'm not even comfortable with agreeing the person is guilty to begin with. In certain cases, say Jeffrey Dahmer, it's pretty clear cut and I see no use to delay the punishment.

What is the harm if they rot in jail? Why is it imperative that they be killed?

Incredible that this needs to be asked, while the is the only western country with the death penalty. It's a remnant of a violent past.

> I like the idea of capital punishment because I don't want to pay to keep murderers alive for decades.

Tough shit. They aren't your pets you don't get to do cost/benefit analysis of another human's life. Absolutely sick worldview.

If you read past that you'd have seen why I was actually arguing against it and due to the bigger issue I see in our justice system. But yes, there are people out there like me that do support capital punishment for various reasons/conditions; sorry to upset you about that news.

It's not news that there is evil, but it continues to surprise me that people are proud to engage in it.

Ok I'm just stating my thoughts and discussing. I think if you want to retort in this manner, you probably should head over to Reddit

No this is good. Part of the villainy of this place is that as long as it's "just discussion" and you keep a controlled tone, you can call for whatever viciousness and violence you want.

And you can! I can't stop you. But I can also point out that you can be seen when you do this, and my assessment isn't less valid because the idea of stomping out human lives is abhorrent to me.

It ceases to be just discussion when you call me evil and vicious and sick world view. It's fine if you disagree in a more productive manner. I wasn't even trying to take a stance; I stated my stance and you attacked. /end

>"Part of the villainy of this place"

What do you mean by this?

The social norms of HN create an environment where you can endorse or advocate for atrocities as long as you do it in a certain detached, academic-lite tone. Things like eugenics, sweatshop labor, colonialism, retributive actions towards homeless people, are all things I've seen argued for and upvoted on this site in the last six months.

Being upset by these things, or admitting a personal stake in not seeing them continue or come to pass in the world, is seen as the moral transgression instead.

This could arguably be a valuable norm in a place specifically set aside for people to practice opposing each other's positions, like a debate club, say. But that's not the purpose here, and routinely acting in this way, maintaining this environment as a value distances us from our humanity and that of other people.

You can't take any punishment back. If you sentence a man to 20 years but overturn it and release him after 10, that's still 10 years of his life you took. Being against capital punishment does not absolve you of the injustices of the justice system.

You can't take back prison either, so you have reason to reconsider that as well, considering it steals years from someone's life and is torture in many (most?) places.

Agreed - the American prison industrial complex is ghastly. But if it's down to being in prison or being executed as an innocent person, only one offers a way for conditions to improve.

Absolutely. There are many flaws with the American legal system that need to be dealt with, but it'll likely have to happen one step at a time.

Here are two of the "possibly innocent" comments:

Carlos DeLuna #744

> I want to say I hold no grudges. I hate no one. I love my family. Tell everyone on death row to keep the faith and don’t give up.

David Spence #773

> I do. First of all, I want you to understand I speak the truth when I say I didn’t kill your kids. Honestly I have not killed anyone. I wish you could get the rage from your hearts and you could see the truth and get rid of the hatred.

source: https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/policy-issues/innocence/execute...

> The original police homicide investigator, Ramon Salinas, acknowledged in the appeals process that he had serious doubts about Mr. Spence's guilt. In a sworn deposition given to Mr. Spence's lawyers in 1993, Marvin Horton, a former Waco police lieutenant who was involved in the case, said, "I do not think David Spence committed this offense."

> The prosecution built its case against Mr. Spence around bite marks -- a state expert said that bite marks on the body of one of the girls matched Mr. Spence's teeth -- and jailhouse snitches, both of which can be highly unreliable forms of evidence. Mr. Spence was already in prison, serving a 90-year sentence for aggravated sexual abuse of an 18-year-old man, when he was indicted for the Waco killings.

> Two of the six jailhouse witnesses who testified at trial subsequently recanted, saying they had been given cigarettes, television privileges and alcohol, and one of them had been allowed conjugal visits with a girlfriend, in exchange for their accusations against Mr. Spence.

Junk science and bought testimony, that's some sweet sweet justice in yer veins.

1 in 25 maybe?

https://www.science.org/content/article/more-4-death-row-inm...

There's some interesting history behind "Hispanic"; here's an example going into it: https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2014/06/16/321819185...

  "Yeah. The only statement I want to make is that I am an innocent man - convicted of a crime I did not commit. I have been persecuted for 12 years for something I did not do. From God's dust I came and to dust I will return - so the earth shall become my throne. I gotta go, road dog. I love you Gabby. [Remaining portion of statement omitted due to profanity.]"

beyond words.

If they're commiting to publish a man's last words before killing him, I wish they kept the profanity in.

Either it was generic profanity and it's not as if it would cause harm at this point. Either it was very specifically pointed at Gabby, and a at least a summary of the profanity would be useful to that person.

It's absolutely bizarre killing a human being is A-OK, but profanity is too far.

>It's absolutely bizarre killing a human being is A-OK, but profanity is too far.

That's not a new idea. It was addressed, at some length, in Apocalypse Now[0].

This YouTube clip[1] from that movie addresses your point directly, but the movie as a whole has even more to say about the value of human life, IMHO.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apocalypse_Now

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yb1lF3UKLDQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNRBajLM8_4

We're too civilized to print profanity, but not so civilized that we shirk from killing people.

> We're too civilized

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_punishment_by_country

>We're too civilized to print profanity, but not so civilized that we shirk from killing people.

We're too civilized to print profanity, but not so civilized that we shirk from killing innocent people.

This one is brutal because there's a huge amount of evidence that that man (Cameron Willingham) was falsely convicted on the basis of a dodgy arson investigation.

https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/policy-issues/innocence/execute...

Wordclouds of this text corpus were an annoyingly common data visualization project years ago.

https://imgur.com/gallery/t61UIgH

Those were... exceedingly difficult to read in some instances.

Lots of prayers to god, family, and friends, and family and friends of the perpetrator's victim(s).

But also some really resounding words about the state of justice in our country, and hearing them from some inmates who were in their mid-twenties no less.

> Those were... exceedingly difficult to read in some instances.

The last words or the descriptions of the murders?

The last words.

And then there’s this guy:

“I hereby declare, Robert Steven Everett and Nicholas Velasquez, guilty of crimes against me, Douglas Alan Feldman. Either by fact or by proxy, I find them both guilty. I hereby sentence both of them to death, which I carried out in August 1998. As of that time, the State of Texas has been holding me illegally in confinement and by force for 15 years. I hereby protest my pending execution and demand immediate relief.”

The dichotomy of a sterile looking list mixed with the very human last words is somehow very touching.

What sticks out to me the most: the column with the title “race” I find incredibly disturbing.

I really don’t understand why they include race in the list? It has nothing to do with their crime or lasts words? But the sex of the offender is not included in the list.

They also record the race of each victim in the Inmate Information... American obsession with race seems unhealthy.

Texas is probably required to track and publish the data as the result of a well-founded accusation that the arrest -> trial -> execution pipeline is racist.

I checked the most recent 20. None of the last statements contained protestations of innocence.

The first one I found was Ruben Cardenas [1], number 545 executed November 8, 2017.

[1] https://www.tdcj.texas.gov/death_row/dr_info/cardenasrubenla...

Here's one.

https://www.tdcj.texas.gov/death_row/dr_info/jonesrichardlas...

So?

Why should they? Even if the person was executed unfairly, why would that be focus of the last moment?

One of the first random ones I clicked on did claim innocence:

https://www.tdcj.texas.gov/death_row/dr_info/clarktroylast.h...

> Thank you I love you all. Sandra, nice meeting you. I Love ya’ll. It’s all good. I’m not the one that killed Christina, so whatever makes ya’ll happy. I love ya’ll. I’ll see you on the other side. Ya’ll be good. OK Warden I’m ready.

>One day in May 1998, Ms Muse came around for a visit and Clark decided to silence her forever. He subdued her with a stun gun, bound her with duct tape and locked her in a wardrobe for several hours while he played video games and sold drugs to a customer.

>Clark later moved Ms Muse to a bathroom where he smashed her over the head with a board and intimidated his girlfriend and co-defendant, Tory Gene Bush, into helping him drown the victim in the bathtub.

>Four months later, Bush helped lead police to Ms Muse's body in the ravine off Texas Highway 64, west of Tyler, on a property owned by Clark's landlady.

>Police also found the body of Tracy Mize floating in a septic tank on the property.

Apparently the physical evidence was also overwhelming, so he probably said that just to fuck with the family or was in some sort of delusional state.

Just in case you're looking for all of them in one place:

https://gist.github.com/d33tah/04d9f86995e0b5b755513246af194...

https://www.tdcj.texas.gov/death_row/dr_info/woodsstevenlast...

A SQL-learning resource that uses this the death row last words dataset as the teaching matter: https://selectstarsql.com/

I used this website when teaching. I did not do it to advance a political agenda, and I was very upfront with the students on that. Rather, I saw it as a strong opportunity to expose them to the variety and humanity of data that is available. The Social Security babynames dataset was also a good resource.

There can’t be anything more profound than a state execution and I read these with a great deal of some feeling I can’t put my finger on… respect? reverance? seriousness?

Insight into the very final moments of a persons life — especially with such clarity — is incredibly rare and yet, on this web page, distressingly common.

Apparently Delbert Teague, Jr. was a nerd. I was not expecting to see the oath of the Knights of Solamnia (from Dragonlance) on a list like this.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragonlance

And then you have last words from those that were likely (or at least plausibly) innocent:

"Yeah. The only statement I want to make is that I am an innocent man — convicted of a crime I did not commit. I have been persecuted for 12 years for something I did not do. From God's dust I came and to dust I will return — so the earth shall become my throne. I gotta go, road dog. I love you Gabby." [Remaining portion of statement omitted due to profanity." - Cameron Todd Willingham

"Lord forgive them. They don't know what they are doing". - Larry Swearingen

"I have fought the good fight, I held my faith. I am not going to say goodbye, I will simply say, until we meet again. I love you very, very much." - Lester Bower

Date of Execution:

April 24, 2019

Inmate:

John William King, TDCJ #999295

Written Statement:

Capital Punishment: Them without the capital get the punishment.

On 06/07/98, during the nighttime hours, the subject[John William King] and co-defendants, Lawrence Brewer and Shawn Allen Berry, murdered James Byrd Jr., a 49-year old black male, by dragging the victim behind their 1982 gray Ford pickup truck, located on Huff Creek Road, in Jasper, Texas. The subject and the co-defendants picked the victim up while he was hitchhiking in Jasper.

Would it be on-topic to point out that some prominent Texan politicians - who have direct responsibility for war crimes that have killed... A lot more people - are free men, today?

There are a lot of awful people who have done a lot of awful things in the world. Despite being an awful person, he is quite correct in observing that not all of them get treated proportionally to the suffering and misery and pain that they have inflicted.

Who are you speaking about specifically?

The Bushes perhaps (who are from Connecticut.)

the #1 cause of death in the world, in the entire history of the earth, is democide.

I agree but prefer the phrase "mass murder by a state".

Instead of taking Byrd home, the three men took Byrd to a remote county road out of town, beat him severely, spray-painted his face, urinated and defecated on him, and chained him by his ankles to their pickup truck before dragging him for about three miles (five kilometers) on Huff Creek Road (County Road 278).

...

In a jailhouse letter to Brewer that was intercepted by jail officials, King expressed pride in the crime and said that he realized while committing the murder that he might have to die. "Regardless of the outcome of this, we have made history. Death before dishonor. Sieg Heil!" King wrote.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_James_Byrd_Jr.

I am against capital punishment, but John William King was a terrible person, and I am glad that he is dead.

For the heck of it I counted the race column. Take it as you like:

    110     ->Hispanic
    206     ->Black
    259     ->White
    3       ->Other

Remember ye olde "statistics does not follow normal intuition"; AKA; you generally need, what, 3+ kinds of numbers to get more than shallow meaning from some stats?

(in this case, those might be: count of population by race; count of crime by race).

Similarly: Once had a job offer include "12,000 shares!", but wouldn't tell me out of how many.

Knowing how biased and at times corrupt the US justice system is, I wonder what percentage of the black are innocent.

For the downvoters unaware or in denial:

"As of January 2022, 375 people previously convicted of serious crimes in the United States had been exonerated by DNA testing since 1989, 21 of whom had been sentenced to death.[11] Almost all (99%) of the wrongful convictions were males,[29] with minority groups constituting approximately 70% (61% African American and 8% Latino)."

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Innocence_Project

I hope people understand the grave injustice by the state. There are 300 people on death row, and everyone is not a monster. Texas is carrying out a very inhumane and injustice. It's not right to kill anybody just because I killed your people. Everyone changes, right? Life is about experience and people change. […] I hope you don't find satisfaction in this, watching a human being die.

Executed for killing another inmate in a fight..

It's not right to kill anybody just because I killed your people. Everyone changes, right?

Try telling the victim that...

Why do this? I'm not sure it serves any good purpose.

Maybe it can help people humanise them a bit? Given another 20-30 years of small things like this, maybe the US could even follow the rest of the developed world and stop executions

Don’t you feel anything reading through these? It doesn’t remind you of the humanity of these people?

The question still stands. Why does the state bother to record them? What purpose does it serve for the pro capital punishment government to humanize those it executes?

The boring answer is that it doesn't serve as pro-capital punishment propaganda.

It is simply a tradition to give the condemned a public last statement. It has foundations in transparency and giving token dignity to the condemned.

It is much preferable to disappearing people to black sites with no records.

I’m too lazy to research this, but maybe some do-gooder managed to push it through legislation at some point so now they have to?

Not everything is a strategic move on the political chess board.

It is part of the ritual.

Probably a state law or administrative policy established this practice as both proof that the execution followed appropriate and customary practices as well as a sense of closure for the community/victims.

I wanted to read all last words without clicking back and forth, so I extracted all of them and created this gist: https://gist.github.com/kajic/9304f31fe970a8f9662ff567eb3274...

Many of the early inmate information is in pdf format. If you want something machine-readable, these have been converted into a csv available here: https://selectstarsql.com/frontmatter.html#dataset

Interestingly enough, one can also see all the inmates that are currently in death row.

.. And contact them possibly via the TDCJ Number.[1]

[1] https://www.tdcj.texas.gov/death_row/dr_offenders_on_dr.html

“I hope my death brings the family peace. I’m ready Warden.”

I wonder how many innocent are executed per year on average.

The Innocence Project estimates 1% of all inmates are wrongfully convicted:

https://innocenceproject.org/how-many-innocent-people-are-in...

Others put the range between 0.027% and 4.1%

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/how-many-...

> So then the next terrifying question is, geeze, how many innocent people have actually been executed?

> Fortunately it’s probably not many. Innocent defendants are far more likley to have their sentenced changed to life in prison than to be executed. Still, with an error rate of 4 percent, the researchers write, “it is all but certain that several of the 1,320 defendants executed since 1977 were innocent.”

Of the 1,320 executions over the past 45 years, using various estimates of wrongful convictions:

0.027% = 0.35 total (~1 every 128.5 years)

1% = 13.2 total (~1 every 3.4 years)

4.1% = 54.12 total (~1 every 10 months)

By criminals or by the justice system?

By the "justice system" obviously.

Seems a bit odd to dwell on the scenario which is far less common.

I'm wondering how common it is.

Assuming every single person executed by the government was innocent, the government executing innocent people is still several orders of magnitude less common than common murder.

18 people were executed by the government in America last year. More than 20 thousand people in America were murdered during the same time period. Assuming the government only executes innocent people, you are 1000x more likely to be murdered by a criminal than a government executioner. If you include everybody killed by the police, and assume every last one of those killings was unjust, you are still 20x more likely to be killed by a common murderer than by the government.

I think you misunderstand my question. I'm not wondering how often innocent people get executed in Texas relative to the number of people murdered. I'm asking about the absolute number.

18 people is the absolute maximum number of innocent people that might have been executed in 2022, for the entirety of America. Texas only executed 5 people in 2022.

Is that a serious question?

Only the justice system can execute someone.

Cartels execute people all the time.

The definition of execute is killing a legally condemned person. The cartels can kill someone execution-style.

I'm surprised that I'm not seeing very many "I am innocent!" Most of it seems to be thanking people and religious sentiments.

Most of those on death row will have committed the crime. That's pretty obvious.

The issue is that there are some people who have claimed to be innocent and may very well be.

I'm certain the futility sets in for a percentage.

Obscenely voyeuristic, why not put the bodes in gibbets and hang them around the Texas department of criminal justice?

Too bad we can't get the last words from many of their victims.

Yeah the victims' families would love that

It's nice to know that in some small way we may actually be morally superior to the people we're executing. But I'm not totally convinced.

Nobody is without fault, that's for sure.

How very Texas of them.

They used to do last meal as well, but I guess they stopped?

At least in Texas, yes. Kind of a funny story how it ended

https://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/article/Last-meal-r...

I don't find it funny at all. Bureaucracies use that type of excuse all the time to justify piling on additional cruelties.

In Florida, inmates may no longer receive mail. No love letters. No Christmas cards. Nothing. FDOC claim it's because some prisoner's mail might have had "drugs" in it. That's the excuse anyway. As of last year, no prisoners in Florida may receive mail from loved ones anymore. Insanity is what I call it. Nothing justifies it. Having been convicted of a crime doesn't justify it, because we also find legal ways to be cruel to people who haven't been accused of any crime. I don't know what people get out of it. Something is wrong with us.

> In Florida, inmates may no longer receive mail.

This isn't true. You can still send letters to inmates in Florida. The letters are digitized and a copy given to the inmate, rather than the original paper. It seems reasonable to me. Other states have already done similar, but I'm not surprised that Florida gets singled out for the flogging.

You neglect to mention the inmate has to pay for each scanned card or letter, which most inmates can't afford. And you can't write on it, because it's on a screen, so if you're sending crosswords, the inmate can't do the crossword now, which is very demoralizing so they'll just ask you to stop sending them. There is another service where they can pay an exorbitant fee for a printout though. It's also very difficult to read scanned handwritten letters even if you pay for the printout. Inmates will ask you to stop sending Christmas cards because it's not worth it for you, and it's not worth it for them. It costs them more than what the card & postage cost you. Also the screens are pretty shitty so when they break down, it takes months to get a replacement.

The worst thing is the lies about why they're doing this. They think we're stupid. They don't really care about prisoners getting sick from possible drugs on the letters. If they really cared about this issue they would screen the letters for drugs, which would be easier & cheaper than scanning and reprinting them, or they would provide healthcare in prisons (they don't), or they could even stop corrections employees from bringing in the drugs in the first place.

If the truth of digital mail is so awful, then it should suffice to say that Florida is digitizing mail to prisons. Saying they've banned mail altogether is simply a lie.

Wow, that is dehumanizing. This is the kind of thing that really drives home our Puritan roots. It's like we've decided that merely locking people behind bars isn't good enough, we need to make sure that every moment is hell.

They stopped in 2011 after the execution of white supremacist murderer Lawrence Brewer, when he ordered a huge last meal of like a dozen different dishes, then said he wasn't hungry and had it thrown away: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-15034970

from what i followed, the whole thing was more of a publicity stunt by a politician than anything else, seeing as the last meals were only prepared using prison ingredients anyway

They still receive a last meal, but I don't believe it's published anymore.

>They still receive a last meal, but I don't believe it's published anymore.

That's so 20th century. Last meals should be fully documented on Instagram, just like many folks do these days. I certainly want to know about and see what strangers are eating. Especially the last meals of death row inmates.

Sheesh!

Edit: Please note that this is sarcasm and doesn't reflect my actual views. cf. Poe's Law[0].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe's_law

.. three words: 'fuck texas. again."

Imagine fine-tuning GPT-3 based on these...

whole lot of Jesus in here

It helps if you read them with an accent.

Using the "race" column? Why is there such a column, anyway? How is that helpful when dealing with prisoners or people in general?

I'm pretty sure he meant the Texas accent, given the number of "y'all"s I've seen.

It helps you take more informed decisions when voting or for the security of your family.

They kill so many people every year!!1

I hope these last words are posted with the inmate's prior permission.

Just check the website. Inmates who declined just have empty pages stating just that.

https://www.tdcj.texas.gov/death_row/dr_info/no_last_stateme...

I don't think you need someone's permission to write down words they say.

But it’s pretty shitty to share someone’s speech on the internet without getting their consent first. A dick move if nothing else. Fortunately that doesn’t seem to be the case here.

They kill them, at this point I’m not sure they need anyone’s permission

I agree. I have a feeling more of the potentially innocent would not succumb to the futility of claiming innocence if they knew it would be publicly viewed.

I think the point is the person is given the opportunity to say something for the public record. Some chose to remain silent.

How many in the list you think were innocent?

I feel uneasy about the so-called ‘evidence’ on this one… How can we be sure who’s glasses these were and that the real culprit didn’t use a different name. If this guy had a decent defender (and was maybe white), he wouldn’t have been convicted.

https://www.tdcj.texas.gov/death_row/dr_info/hughesprestoni....

Preston Hughes, #939

Yes, Warden. Mom, Celeste: Please know I'm innocent and I love you both. Please continue to fight for my innocence even though I'm gone. John, Cort, Allen, Barbara, Louis, and Anna: Thank you for helping me and trying to save my life. I love you. Give everybody my love. Jason, thank you for your friendship. Thank Laura, too. I love all of you. Bye. Ok, Warden.

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