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

tdcj.texas.gov

191–200 of 300 posts

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

#191

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.

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.

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

#192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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 circ…

> 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...

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

#193

Wordclouds of this text corpus were an annoyingly common data visualization project years ago. https://imgur.com/gallery/t61UIgH

[flagged]

Murder.

I hope you enjoyed the word cloud. I'll send you my bill.

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

#194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

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

#195

“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 numero…

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

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

#198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

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

#199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 circ…

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

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

#200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By criminals or by the justice system?

Is that a serious question? Only the justice system can execute someone.

Cartels execute people all the time.
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