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Death Row – Last words of every Texas inmate executed since 1982

tdcj.state.tx.us

31–40 of 139 posts

Re: Death Row – Last words of every Texas inmate executed since 1982

#31
post #19

When California released a similar database a few years ago, it completely convinced me of the horrific barbarism that capital punishment is. It is no deterrent to crime, and the risk of killing not just innocent people, but genuinely reformed people, is far, far too great.

Yeah, a list like this tugs at your humanity. Then again, these people wantonly killed others (as judged by juries and appeals judges and governors). Where are the last words of their victims? [edited for clarity]

> Then again, these people wantonly killed others (as judged by juries and appeals judges and governors).

Did they? Or did they have the misfortune of, say, being black?

Attempting to excuse the barbarism of the state and its documented tendency to murder and imprison-for-life people who are Not White just for the fun of it by appealing to those monsters under the bed is fucked.

Re: Death Row – Last words of every Texas inmate executed since 1982

#33
post #5

Note that this text is in some cases censored. See Cameron Todd Willingham's statement: "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 stateme…

I find it profoundly dissonant that, while reporting the last words of people who were then legally murdered by the state (an inexcusable, brutal injustice, to my mind), the functionaries responsible yet found prissiness enough to cut out the swear words.

State-sanctioned murder? No problemo! A couple of swear words in the victim's dying breaths? Woah, hold it right there - there might be children present.

Unbelievable.

Re: Death Row – Last words of every Texas inmate executed since 1982

#35
post #5

Note that this text is in some cases censored. See Cameron Todd Willingham's statement: "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 stateme…

There's a strange sense of morality in being able to execute someone but not show their full last words due to swearing. The US media seems to view the world in a similar way.

Re: Death Row – Last words of every Texas inmate executed since 1982

#36

The title for this is incorrectly applying the public suffix list ( https://publicsuffix.org/ ) and comes up with "tx.us". That's not the registered domain name here.

  // The registrar notes several more specific domains available in each state,
  // such as state.*.us, dst.*.us, etc., but resolution of these is somewhat
  // haphazard; in some states these domains resolve as addresses, while in others
  // only subdomains are available, or even nothing at all. We include the
  // most common ones where it's clear that different sites are different
  // entities.

Re: Death Row – Last words of every Texas inmate executed since 1982

#38
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, a list like this tugs at your humanity. Then again, these people wantonly killed others (as judged by juries and appeals judges and governors). Where are the last words of their victims? [edited for clarity]

Regardless of how horrific their crimes were we can never really be certain enough of their guilt to kill them. Nor should we give our government power to kill its citizens. I don't know how anyone can believe the death penalty to be a good idea. 1. Look at the countries America is in company with in allowing capital punishment - it's not a list any country should want to be a part of. 2. Imagine yourself as an innoc…

Regardless of how horrific their crimes were we can never really be certain enough of their guilt to kill them

That's a strange thing to say categorically. So if we have a lot of witnesses, video, a manifesto of motive, physical evidence, etc... we can't be certain enough to feel that someone should be permanently removed from the world?

Re: Death Row – Last words of every Texas inmate executed since 1982

#39
post #6

The title should be " ... of every inmate executed in Texas since 1982." From reddit [1], here is a word cloud: http://imgur.com/t61UIgH [1] http://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/26rui7/oc_a...

Interesting comment on that word cloud: "Wonder what their victims word cloud would look like? "Mercy" "Please" "I'm begging" "I want my Mommy!" "Help""

I plugged it into Wordle at http://www.wordle.net

It's quite poignant.

I deleted it afterwards as it didn't seem right to leave it up in public without more thought.

Re: Death Row – Last words of every Texas inmate executed since 1982

#40
Texas you don't get the death penalty for murder, you get it for committing a second felony and murder. Rob Will is on Polunsky DR and likely innocent considering he was handcuffed at the time, zero physical evidence, and his partner confessed to the murder. DA is a stepping stone to governor and senate there is much incentive for DAs to seek the death penalty due to all the media attention these trials receive, propelling the DA into a household name. The more inmates you kill the bigger your public profile.
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