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- Strapped to a gurney that’s tilted toward the witness seats, condemned inmates are given two minutes to make a last statement. Many apologize to the families of their victims or thank their own families, friends and lawyers for support. Others insist they are innocent or rail against the justice system that put them there.
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Dec 13, 2023 · Sometimes prisoners’ last words appear to have been written by someone else: Richard J. Wilkerson, executed in August of 1993, referred to himself in the third person, saying, “Killing R.J....
Mar 10, 2024 · You may have heard of last meals on death row, but what about last words? From bizarre food puns to bone-chilling declarations, the world has heard a number of spine-tingling last...
- Jimmy Glass, 1987
- Jeffrey David Matthews, 2011
- Barbara Graham, 1955
- George Appel, 1928
- James Lewis Jackson, 2007
- Robert Charles Towery, 2012
- George Engel, 1887
- Aileen Wuornos, 2002
- James French, 1966
- Johnny Frank Garrett, 1992
Last Words: “I’d Rather Be Fishing” On Christmas of 1982, 20 year-old Jimmy Glass and inmate Jimmy Wingo escaped from jail and shot an elderly couple to death while burglarizing their home. Both blamed each other for the crime and both ended up on the electric chair.
Last Words:“I think that governor’s phone is broke. He hadn’t called yet.” Jeffrey David Matthews had his execution postponed three times, twice by the governor of Oklahoma to further investigate his claims of innocence and once due to the controversy surrounding the drugs they were going to administer to him. Matthews was indicted for the 1994 mur...
Last Words:“Good people are always so sure they’re right.” After a rough childhood and a string of failed marriages, Barbara Graham went into prostitution before being married again to a bartender and drug addict. She soon left him for a business associate of his, Emmett Perkins, who ran an illegal gambling operation. The couple, as well as other a...
Last Words:“Well, gentlemen, you are about to see a baked Appel.” While getting strapped to the electric chair, George Appel suddenly found the situation humorous, and delivered those infamous last words. These words quickly spread through the public and became more remembered than his actual crime. He was convicted of first degree murder for killi...
Last Words: “Warden, murder me.” He then referred to Harris County (where he was convicted) as Sodom and Gomorrah, the biblical cities destroyed by God for their sins. “I’m ready to roll. Time to get this party started.” In 1995, James Lewis Jackson married Sharon Jackson and became a father to two step daughters. Due to heavy drug use, he had trou...
Last Words:“I love my family. Potato, potato, potato.” Robert Charles Towery was executed through lethal injecting, which is ironic considering he was charged for injecting battery acid into his victim before strangling him to death in a 1991 robbery. The victim was a philanthropist who loaned money to Towery on several occasions and used him as hi...
Last Words: “Hurrah for anarchy! This is the happiest moment of my life.” George Engel was a German immigrant who lost faith in the political process and joined the International Working People’s Association. In 1886 a big rally full of anarchists and labor activists turned violent when a bomb was thrown at the police, killing seven. Although nobod...
Last Words:“Yes, I would just like to say I’m sailing with the Rock, and I’ll be back, like Independence Day with Jesus. June 6, like the movie. Big mother ship and all, I’ll be back, I’ll be back.” With a father who was a child molester and hung himself in jail and a mother who abandoned her to the care of her grandparents, Aileen Wuornos’ childho...
Last Words: “How about this for a headline for tomorrow’s paper? French fries.” In 1958, James French murdered a driver who picked him up from hitchhiking. While serving his life sentence, he decided that he didn’t want to live anymore but was too afraid to end his own life. And so, he killed his inmate to compel the state to execute him by electri...
Last Words: “I’d like to thank my family for loving me and taking care of me. And the rest of the world can kiss my ass.” Indicted for the rape and murder of a nun in 1981, Johnny Frank Garrett’s execution was a controversial one due to the fact that he was mentally handicapped and only seventeen when he was sentenced. He had a horrific childhood, ...
Jul 8, 2021 · Before the act of taking a death row prisoner’s life, whether by lethal injection, the gas chamber or historically another way, the condemned are given an opportunity to speak their last words.
Sep 7, 2021 · Usually, those regulations don’t end up in court, but in 1999 the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio filed suit after prison officials barred the condemned from speaking their last words, telling them to write them down instead, so an official could read them aloud after the execution, and censor them as they saw fit.
May 24, 2017 · Election 2024. Caitlin Clark. Scarlett Johansson. Death row inmates’ last words: Apologies, thanks, defiance. By KATE BRUMBACK. Updated 12:06 PM PDT, May 24, 2017. ATLANTA (AP) — Georgia inmate J.W. Ledford Jr. used his final moments to quote from the movie “Cool Hand Luke” and toss out an insult. “What we have here is a failure to communicate.
Aug 16, 2020 · 16 August 2020. To prompt a deeper understanding of the death-penalty system in the US, photographer Jackie Black recreated the last meals requested by prisoners on death row before they...
