Last words of the executed

315 Pages·2010·1.429 MB·English

by  Terkel, Studs;Elder, Robert K

last words
of the executed

LAST WORDS
OF THE EXECUTED
robert k. elder
With a Foreword by Studs Terkel
the university of chicago press
Chicago and London
robert k. elder, a journalist and author, lives
in Chicago. He teaches journalism at Northwestern
University and can be found on the web at
www .robelder .com.
The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637
The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London
© 2010 by Robert K. Elder
All rights reserved. Published 2010
Printed in the United States of America
18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 1 2 3 4 5
isbn- 13: 978-0-226-20268-6
isbn- 10: 0-226-20268-2
Library of Congress Cataloging- in-Publication Data
Elder, Robert K.
Last words of the executed / Robert K. Elder ; with a
foreword by Studs Terkel.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn- 13: 978-0-226-20268-6 (cloth : alk. paper)
isbn- 10: 0-226-20268-2 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Last
words. I. Terkel, Studs, 1912– 2008. II. Title.
PN6328.L3E43 2010
082—dc22
2009038402
o The paper used in this publication meets the minimum
requirements of the American National Standard for
Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed
Library Materials, ansi z39.48-1992.
for studs terkel,
friend and mentor
1912– 2008

contents
Foreword by Studs Terkel ix
Introduction 1
1 The Noose 9
2 The Firing Squad 101
3 The Electric Chair 126
4 The Gas Chamber 175
5 Lethal Injection 191
A Note on Accuracy and Sources 273
Timeline of Capital Punishment in the United States 277
Acknowledgments 281
Bibliography 283
Index 287

foreword
Studs Terkel
Every thoughtful person at one time or another has had a fantasy
about the last words he or she would say in approaching death. It
might be toward the end of a lingering illness, a sudden accident,
or murder. As for me, last words can be in the form of an epitaph.
Mine’s a simple one: “Curiosity did not kill this cat.”
In Robert K. Elder’s remarkable, deeply moving assemblage of
last words, his informants are all inmates of death row. And who are
the most likely interpreters of last words? Those who know the time,
the place, and circumstance of their deaths.
Elder, as an assiduous journalist, has collected these final
thoughts. Before I chose just a few of Elder’s selections, I thought
of Delbert Lee Tibbs. He was an African American theologian who,
while hitching rides in the South on a vacation, was accused of the
rape of a white woman and the murder of her friend. It was an all-
white jury, and the trial was something of a farce. He was patently
innocent, but he was convicted and remained on death row for over
two years, until the Florida Supreme Court acquitted him.
Here are some of Tibbs’s thoughts while in prison: “I believe that
life is endless. We can’t talk about life without talking about death.
We can’t talk about death without talking about life.”
He quotes the Dalai Lama. He was reading the Bible, the Old
and New Testaments; he was reading the Bhagavad- Gita. He quotes
ix