During the recent discussion about the case of Cameron Todd Willingham, his last profanity-laced words were discussed in our comments. So when I saw this article about Texas making the last words of Death Row inmates publicly available, I was hoping I could see for myself what he said.
But Willingham’s statement has the last bit omitted, due to that very profanity. Reading quickly over a number of the statements on the list of executed offenders, the first thing to hit me is the truth of the old saying: There are no atheists in foxholes.
UPDATE: I neglected to mention that the Texas Forensic Science Commission will review Willingham’s case on Friday, for all the good it will do him.
11 comments
Comparing death row inmates to soldiers seems questionable at best. And the “old saying” is not true and never has been. See one personal account of an atheist in a foxhole or check out WW2 evidence of war driving people away from religion.
Dave, does this also mean that “close” counts in MORE than horse shoes and hand grenades?! What about that death and taxes thing? Wow, you’ve really enlightened me away from the 100% application-of-old-sayings lifestyle I’ve been living.
In other news, I let some profanity fly after reading the New Yorker article so I imagine I would do the same if I was one actually being, you know, killed by the state.
No funeral
My last profanity-laced words? Well, since you asked: **** *** my ****, ***** — if I weren’t strapped down like a heaving, bug-eyed beast I’d ****** my **** in your *****, you ****!
And somebody tell the ******* chef the seventeenth hot wing was burned, and he used ************* chili with ******* beans in Frito pie No. 3.
Ready now.
Just to clarify, Texas has included these statements online for years. The blog post you link to gets that wrong. And he steals a KRT photo without attribution. And he thinks we have a place called Hunstville Prison. I welcome British writers’ attention to our odd Texas fixation with killing criminals, but I wish they’d get their facts straight.
Yes, the statements have been online for years. Looks like the Daily Mail picked it up because the New York Times ran a letter featuring a list of some of the statements and the link to the site about a week ago.
I wonder what Karmon and Kameron, who were one-year-old twin girls, and two-year-old Amber’s last words were. Was Willingham standing over them after knocking them down like he did his pregnant wife when they cried there last words?
DB ( i can think of something else that stands for),
I realize that it is easy to be persuaded by emotion along with them folks in Corsicana who appeared to got smarts real good, but this is case of facts. Or rather it should have been, but was not. Read The New Yorker piece, then come back. It might just make you the smartest DB at the coffee shop.
matt – I read the New Yorker piece – did you? The New Yorker is a lefty rag with an agenda which is to push their anti death penalty position and interfere with the Texas governor race.
I’m sure that Dr. Hurst is a very competent arson investigator and it seems that he wants to change the way investigations are done to his way. In the Willingham case, he did not investigate the fire scene, he did not interview Willingham or any of the witnesses and yet he wants to declare the fire not arson. The New Yorker references the Lime Street experiment where they “proved” that a non accelerant fire could mimic the burn patterns of an accelerant assisted fire after flashover. The Dallas Observer did a story about another case that Hurst got involved in and the author quoted another arson investigator: “John Lentini explains it like this: You get a motel that’s gone out of business—and this has been done—and set some test fires and do some fire research. You have 10 identical rooms. You have 10 identical sets of furniture in exactly the same location. If you go into those 10 rooms and light them in exactly the same place, I’m going to get 10 different results.”
Which is it going to be?
This movement is trying to make Governor Perry and the state of Texas look bad for supposedly executing an innocent man with “evidence” that has not been subject to the system.
The New Yorker should be focusing on New York politics (and the Wall Street slime) where they seem to have the blind leading the blind and leave Texas alone.
Numerous other online sources have stated that his “profanity laced tirade” consisted of saying to Tracy “I hope you rot in hell, bitch” several times.
DB — sorry, despite your dislike of New York, the New Yorker’s case is far more compelling than the prosecution’s, and several other nationally known fire investigators agree that there is no evidence of arson.
Willingham was innocent, and Texas does look bad….
Eric – I don’t dislike New York, I lived there, my oldest was born there, I enjoy visiting there but I also know plenty of snooty New Yorkers and the author has that attitude.
To declare Willingham innocent is absurd. Maybe someday Tracy will tell what she knows. You have to admit, Willingham had an interesting take on God, forgiveness and bitches at the very end.