Sometimes we remember nothing more than someone's last words.
Take, for example, Revolutionary War patriot and spy Nathan Hale. We remember little of him but how he left this world. "I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country," is how history records his last words.
The final words of the famous and infamous have been collected since antiquity because they speak to a primal curiosity and spark introspection: what does one say on the edge of oblivion? We expect last words to be poignant, a résumé or summation of life experience. Sometimes they are, sometimes they are not. We want them to reveal secrets. But they very seldom do.
While other books have recorded the last words of the rich, respected and famous, Last Words of the Executed documents the final thoughts of the most discarded, reviled members of our society. It's an oral history of the overlooked, the infamous and the forgotten--who nonetheless speak to a common humanity with their last act on earth. This is the history of capital punishment in America, told from the gallows, the chair, and the gurney.
Andrea Lyon: Fighting the Death Penalty: Hope for Change
Proponents of the death penalty have stopped trying to argue it deters crime or that it costs less or that all victims want this. All of the justifications for the death penalty come down to one which they effectively argue: retribution.
Benjamin Todd Jealous: Death Row Inmate's Rare Chance to Prove his Innocence
The saga of death row inmate Troy Anthony Davis is entering its last chapter. In an extremely rare ruling last summer, the Supreme Court ordered a federal judge in Georgia to grant Troy an evidentiary hearing to prove his innocence.
Matt Idom: Texas, the Death Penalty, and the Will of God
I do not believe that capital punishment belongs in our world. The arguments of "crime determent" and "continuing threat to society" are masked justifications for a human response to justice, not a divine one.
dying words of famous people - famous last words
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Associated Press 01.13.04
BIRMINGHAM, Alabama -- Mary Kate Gach thought she had heard the last of Jack Trawick when he went to death row for murdering her daughter in 1992.
Instead, Trawick's twisted writings about how he beat, strangled and stabbed Stephanie Gach and killed other women are available to anyone who wants to read them on the Internet. Many of the writings were put there by a one-time pen pal and admirer of Trawick's.
Read More http://www.wired.com/culture/lifestyle/news/2004/01/61909#ixzz0w0XLbWFR
The Greatest Coward is the murderer. A lot of these monsters deserved the death penalty.
What a condemnation of the abhorrent, anti-human state of our crumbling and over-crowded prison system, people would rather die than live in a American Prison.
Aileen Wuornos might have watched too much TV.
I don't think Lamont got the last word out.
http://graciouslivingdaybyday.com/
http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/information-defendants-who-were-executed-1976-and-designated-volunteers
'Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.'