20 ms·
Texas Records All Inmates Last Words Before Execution And Puts Them All Online
- pmdulaney 4y agoI hope these last words are posted with the inmate's prior permission.
- baby 4y agoThey kill them, at this point I’m not sure they need anyone’s permission
- JamesBarney 4y agoI don't think you need someone's permission to write down words they say.
- escapedmoose 4y agoBut 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.
- laserdancepony 4y agoJust check the website. Inmates who declined just have empty pages stating just that. https://www.tdcj.texas.gov/death_row/dr_info/no_last_statement.html https://www.tdcj.texas.gov/death_row/dr_info/no_last_stateme...
- francisofascii 4y agoI think the point is the person is given the opportunity to say something for the public record. Some chose to remain silent.
- ashwagary 4y agoI 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.
- minimaxir 4y agoWordclouds of this text corpus were an annoyingly common data visualization project years ago. https://imgur.com/gallery/t61UIgH https://imgur.com/gallery/t61UIgH
- thinking4real 4y ago[flagged]
- public_defender 4y agoMurder. I hope you enjoyed the word cloud. I'll send you my bill.
- jimrandomh 4y agoI checked the most recent 20. None of the last statements contained protestations of innocence.
- anakaine 4y agoSo?
- watwut 4y agoWhy should they? Even if the person was executed unfairly, why would that be focus of the last moment?
- RajT88 4y agoOne of the first random ones I clicked on did claim innocence: https://www.tdcj.texas.gov/death_row/dr_info/clarktroylast.html 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.
- mardifoufs 4y ago>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.
- vyrotek 4y ago
- llIIllIIllIIl 4y agoThey kill so many people every year!!1
- owlninja 4y agoThey used to do last meal as well, but I guess they stopped?
- tristor 4y agoThey still receive a last meal, but I don't believe it's published anymore.
- nobody9999 4y ago>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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe's_law
- frakt0x90 4y agoAt least in Texas, yes. Kind of a funny story how it ended https://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/article/Last-meal-requests-come-to-an-end-on-Texas-death-2184484.php https://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/article/Last-meal-r...
- Lendal 4y agoI 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.
- dionidium 4y agoHard 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/jonesquintinlast.htm https://www.tdcj.texas.gov/death_row/dr_info/jonesquintinlas... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Execution_of_Quintin_Jones https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Execution_of_Quintin_Jones
- prmph 4y agoDepends 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.
- namdnay 4y agoThe 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
- thinking4real 4y ago[flagged]
- 0xfeba 4y agoHe said killing, no imprisoning.
- dvt 4y ago[flagged]
- swader999 4y agoToo bad we can't get the last words from many of their victims.
- tehwebguy 4y agoYeah the victims' families would love that
- rootusrootus 4y agoIt'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.
- swader999 4y agoNobody is without fault, that's for sure.
- jslql 4y agoIt helps if you read them with an accent.
- tomovo 4y agoUsing the "race" column? Why is there such a column, anyway? How is that helpful when dealing with prisoners or people in general?
- calvinmorrison 4y agoDate of Execution: April 24, 2019 Inmate: John William King, TDCJ #999295 Written Statement: Capital Punishment: Them without the capital get the punishment.
- googlryas 4y agoOn 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.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- vkou 4y agoWould 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.
- calvinmorrison 4y agothe #1 cause of death in the world, in the entire history of the earth, is democide.
- ashwagary 4y agoI agree but prefer the phrase "mass murder by a state".
- googlryas 4y agoWho are you speaking about specifically?
- dotgov 4y agoThe 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.
- dhsysusbsjsi 4y ago[flagged]
- voz_ 4y ago[flagged]
- namdnay 4y agoI don't find it more sickening than the death penalty itself, it's just another weird dichotomy in american culture. executing convicts but censoring nipples on TV. I guess every culture has their share of these
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- zikduruqe 4y agoWe as humans find it as a source of entertainment. It always has been. Here is a good podcast https://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore-history-61-blitz-painfotainment/ https://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore-history-61-blitz-...
- rootusrootus 4y agoThat is ignorant. The idea of last words & meals predates America by a couple thousand years at least. I'm not sure why you think we're obsessed with it, either?
- t-writescode 4y agoI was the last person in my family to speak to my mother before she died. I take her words to heart. For me, they were her last direct words to me. When you become a ward of the state, the only people that will directly hear your words are the State, with possibly decades of life having passed since they last spoke to people they knew before they went in. The State chooses to take the responsibility of sharing those last words with the world. Last Words and even the last meal provides us a vision into the world and into their mind's state in their time nearing death. The currently top-rated comment on HN is someone using their last words to try and beg for injustices within the prison system to be looked at. We wouldn't have those words otherwise and the perpetrators would be even more likely to be able to continue their harm than if those words hadn't.
- Ancalagon 4y agoThose 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.
- insane_dreamer 4y agoWhy do this? I'm not sure it serves any good purpose.
- escapedmoose 4y agoDon’t you feel anything reading through these? It doesn’t remind you of the humanity of these people?
- hoten 4y agoThe 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?
- escapedmoose 4y agoI’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?
- timeon 4y agoIt is part of the ritual.
- s1artibartfast 4y agoThe 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.
- xboxnolifes 4y agoNot everything is a strategic move on the political chess board.
- namdnay 4y agoMaybe 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
- whalesalad 4y agohttps://www.tdcj.texas.gov/death_row/dr_info/woodsstevenlast.html https://www.tdcj.texas.gov/death_row/dr_info/woodsstevenlast...
- kubb 4y agoI wonder how many innocent are executed per year on average.
- SoftTalker 4y agoBy criminals or by the justice system?
- kubb 4y agoBy the "justice system" obviously.
- LarryMullins 4y agoSeems a bit odd to dwell on the scenario which is far less common.
- kubb 4y agoI'm wondering how common it is.
- LarryMullins 4y agoAssuming 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.
- IllogicalLogic 4y ago[dead]
- dilap 4y agoI 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.
- francisofascii 4y agoHere 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/executed-but-possibly-innocent https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/policy-issues/innocence/execute...
- formerly_proven 4y ago> 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.
- jackson1442 4y ago
- sam1r 4y agoInterestingly 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 https://www.tdcj.texas.gov/death_row/dr_offenders_on_dr.html
- chaps 4y ago"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.
- makeitdouble 4y agoIf 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.
- SketchySeaBeast 4y agoIt's absolutely bizarre killing a human being is A-OK, but profanity is too far.
- nobody9999 4y ago>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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apocalypse_Now [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yb1lF3UKLDQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yb1lF3UKLDQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNRBajLM8_4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNRBajLM8_4
- vkou 4y agoWe're too civilized to print profanity, but not so civilized that we shirk from killing people.
- 4y ago
- paulcole 4y agoImagine fine-tuning GPT-3 based on these...
- irrational 4y agoI'm surprised that I'm not seeing very many "I am innocent!" Most of it seems to be thanking people and religious sentiments.
- gorgoiler 4y agoThere 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.
- fartzzz 4y agoI 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.
- blueflow 4y agoThey also record the race of each victim in the Inmate Information... American obsession with race seems unhealthy.
- public_defender 4y agoTexas 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.
- wwarner 4y ago“I hope my death brings the family peace. I’m ready Warden.”
- optimalsolver 4y agoApparently 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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragonlance
- d33 4y agoJust in case you're looking for all of them in one place: https://gist.github.com/d33tah/04d9f86995e0b5b755513246af194a80 https://gist.github.com/d33tah/04d9f86995e0b5b755513246af194...
- kerblang 4y agoFor the heck of it I counted the race column. Take it as you like: 110 ->Hispanic 206 ->Black 259 ->White 3 ->Other
- RangerScience 4y agoRemember 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.
- ashwagary 4y agoKnowing 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 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Innocence_Project
- coreyp_1 4y agoA SQL-learning resource that uses this the death row last words dataset as the teaching matter: https://selectstarsql.com/ 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.
- lom 4y agoI 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..
- userbinator 4y agoIt's not right to kill anybody just because I killed your people. Everyone changes, right? Try telling the victim that...
- wnevets 4y agoHow very Texas of them.
- rdxm 4y ago[dead]
- alach11 4y agoAnd 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
- sorokod 4y agoObscenely voyeuristic, why not put the bodes in gibbets and hang them around the Texas department of criminal justice?
- nsetypom 4y ago[flagged]
- zckao 4y agoMany 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 https://selectstarsql.com/frontmatter.html#dataset
- dr_dshiv 4y ago“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.”
- ALittleLight 4y agoFor context, this speaker was convicted of raping, beating, and murdering a pregnant woman and a teenage girl. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosendo_Rodriguez https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosendo_Rodriguez
- rosywoozlechan 4y agoHe didn't say anything about his victims or their families.
- nickelcitymario 4y agoMaybe 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?
- t-writescode 4y agoAnd? 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"?
- tspike 4y agoAnd 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.”
- WhackyIdeas 4y agoHow 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.jpg 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.
- fancyPantsZero 4y agowhole lot of Jesus in here
- DueDilligence 4y ago.. three words: 'fuck texas. again."
- 12311231231 4y ago[dead]
- kajic 4y agoI 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/9304f31fe970a8f9662ff567eb3274f3 https://gist.github.com/kajic/9304f31fe970a8f9662ff567eb3274...