Roughly once every 22 days, a convicted killer is executed in America’s busiest death house: the Huntsville “Walls” Unit in Texas. He cannot choose his final meal, but once strapped to the execution table, with IV lines in his arms, a chaplain’s hand on his ankle, and a microphone suspended above his head, he is allowed to choose his final words…
People’s lives are full of firsts, and amongst the most significant are a child’s first words. When that barely intelligible first phrase clumsily slips from his or her lips, a special moment is marked in time and forever remembered by those who happen to witness it.
A person’s last words, however, are much more rarely remembered or recorded, because ‘lasts’ in life usually occur without our knowledge—we don’t see them coming. Humans, after all, are in the habit of planning firsts, not scheduling lasts, and there’s always a chance that we’ll say, see or experience something again in the future. Most people, therefore, die without ever knowing on which day they will see their last sunset, or hug their parents for the final time, or utter their last words.
Death ushers them away without warning, and in doing so controls every ‘last’ they will ever have and not remember.
But there is a tiny subset of the population whose departures from life are not at the mercy of chance, but subject to the will of the state. They are the prisoners of America’s death row. For these condemned individuals, every ‘last’ can be planned and will be remembered, because their deaths are scheduled not just to a certain week or day, but to an exact minute. And the last thing they know they will ever do is speak about 100 words to the people who have gathered to watch, or help, them die. What, then, do they say? What messages do they most want to get off their chests and into the minds of their families and the families of their victims?
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Mar 26, 2012
Green was teaching art at the University of Oklahoma in 1999, when she read an article in her local paper about an Oklahoma inmate's execution and became intrigued about the details of a last meal that were included.
Apr 02, 2012
... of 16 photos taken by U.S.-based photographer Toshi Kazama, featuring pictures of death-row inmates in the United States and Taiwan, execution sites, execution devices like the electric chair and a prisoner's last meal.
