{"id":211322,"date":"2026-05-21T19:20:51","date_gmt":"2026-05-21T19:20:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/after-5-decades-and-600-executions-these-are-the-last-words-on-texas-death-row-nbc-news\/"},"modified":"2026-05-21T19:20:51","modified_gmt":"2026-05-21T19:20:51","slug":"after-5-decades-and-600-executions-these-are-the-last-words-on-texas-death-row-nbc-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/after-5-decades-and-600-executions-these-are-the-last-words-on-texas-death-row-nbc-news\/","title":{"rendered":"After 5 decades and 600 executions, these are the last words on Texas\u2019 death row – NBC News"},"content":{"rendered":"

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An NBC News analysis of every final statement shows that some convey a readiness to die. Others are defiant. And many seek salvation.
Strapped to a gurney, moments from death, prisoners in Texas\u2019 execution chamber have been asked a solemn question for as long as the state has administered lethal injections<\/a>: Do you have a last statement?
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Over five decades, hundreds have spoken, envisioning entry into heaven, begging for forgiveness and trying to reckon with their crimes. They\u2019ve lashed out at the justice system, proclaimed their innocence and admonished the death penalty. They\u2019ve expressed acceptance and urged the warden to carry on: \u201cI\u2019m ready.\u201d \u201cSend me home.\u201d \u201cGoodbye.\u201d
For people to end up on the state\u2019s death row, a unanimous jury must find them guilty of capital murder \u2014 which involves aggravating factors, such as killing multiple victims or a law enforcement officer. The crimes of the executed have included the slayings of wives and children, store clerks and strangers. Those convicted include serial killers, bank robbers and avowed racists.
Texas last week carried out its 600th execution<\/a>. The state is unrivaled in its pursuit of capital punishment, accounting for more than a third of all executions nationwide since the Supreme Court ruled the death penalty constitutional in 1976.
Since then, officials have preserved each and every prisoner\u2019s final words.
NBC News analyzed all of the last verbal and written statements, pulling them from Texas\u2019 online database and categorizing common themes by hand.
The statements show that across 50 years, little has changed in the way people on the row face their impending deaths. Last words are last words, despite the passage of time, conveying similar messages of sorrow, love, anger, camaraderie, defiance, hope and guilt.
\u201cI am so sorry. I ask that you please, please don\u2019t hate me and that you can find it in your heart to forgive me for the part that I played in what happened to her,\u201d said Edward Busby Jr., who was executed Thursday.
Busby, 53, was convicted in the 2004 suffocation death of retired Texas Christian University professor Laura Lee Crane. Tarrant County prosecutors said Busby and an accomplice abducted Crane, 77, from a grocery store parking lot, robbed her and then asphyxiated her with duct tape, wrapping 14 layers around her face.
\u201cPlease forgive me, please, if not for me, for yourself,\u201d Busby said. \u201cBecause the Father said if we don\u2019t forgive those who wrong us, He will not forgive us.\u201d
Bryan Mark Rigg, a former student of Crane\u2019s, watched the execution on behalf of her family from a viewing area outside the chamber. Busby\u2019s remarks about needing to forgive felt \u201cpresumptuous,\u201d Rigg said, but he found it important to hear him \u201cembrace responsibility.\u201d
\u201cI\u2019m glad he had the self-reflection by acknowledging, \u2018What I did was wrong, and I wish I didn\u2019t do it, and she was a good person,\u2019\u201d Rigg said. \u201cNot hearing anything vs. hearing that, I\u2019m glad I heard that.\u201d
Texas ushered in its modern era of executions in 1982, when it became the first state to put a prisoner to death by lethal injection drugs<\/a>, still its only legalized form of capital punishment.
Death penalty states generally allow last statements from the execution chamber, but Texas catalogs the prisoners\u2019 last words online<\/a>, except for vulgar and racist language or what sounds unintelligible. Executions are not recorded, so statements are transcribed at the time by hand. Taken together, the collection serves as a haunting reminder that behind the execution numbers were people who asserted, one last time, what was important to them.
\u201cThe words often show us the humanity that exists within those we would otherwise write off as \u2018monsters,\u2019\u201d said Scott Vollum, a University of Minnesota Duluth criminology professor who analyzed the last words of Texas prisoners for a 2008 book<\/a>. \u201cThey also exhibit the ability of people, even those who have done really horrible things, to transform themselves and reclaim their humanity.\u201d
Vollum said that in reviewing the statements \u2014 he examined over 300 at the time \u2014 there were consistent themes, tying many of their stories together. They mostly leaned positive, he said, like general expressions of love, encouragement of others on death row and wishes of peace and closure for victims\u2019 families.
Asked about the state\u2019s compilation of last statements, a Department of Criminal Justice spokesperson said its page dedicated to executed inmates \u2014 594 men and six women \u2014 was visited more than 1.1 million times last year. The state previously shared inmates\u2019 final spoken and written words. But it changed the policy in 2019<\/a> to include only verbal statements after prison officials drew controversy for reading the written words of an avowed racist who was executed<\/a> for the gruesome dragging death of a Black man.
Not all death row prisoners choose to make last statements, but over time, a greater share of inmates have decided to do so. Overall, 20% have opted to say nothing.
\u201cI would imagine in some cases it\u2019s defiance or refusal to go along with the rituals being imposed,\u201d Vollum said, \u201cwhich would be another way to assert one\u2019s agency.\u201d
Sentiments of love, family and religion are shared most often. Prisoners have wished loved ones \u201chappy birthday\u201d and given final instructions: \u201cBury me right beside momma.\u201d \u201cGod\u201d has been invoked 283 times and \u201cLord\u201d referred to 187.
Jermarr Arnold, who was executed in 2002, said he had \u201cmade peace with God\u201d and sang \u201cAmazing Grace.\u201d
Arnold was sentenced to death after he robbed a Corpus Christi jewelry store in 1983 and fatally shot a worker.
\u201cI can give you one thing, and I\u2019m going to give that today,\u201d he told the victim\u2019s family. \u201cI\u2019m give a life for a life.\u201d
Feelings of remorse and regret are also prevalent. \u201cI\u2019m sorry\u201d or a variation of it was said 234 times; \u201cforgive me\u201d was expressed 117.
\u201cThere is no excuse for what I did,\u201d Larry Hayes said at his 2003 execution<\/a> for fatally shooting his wife, Mary, and then driving to a nearby convenience store, where he killed a Black clerk named Rosalyn Robinson. His case was the first since 1854 in which a white man in Texas was put to death for the murder of a Black person, The Associated Press reported<\/a>.
\u201cRosalyn\u2019s mother asked me at the trial, \u2018Why?\u2019 and I do not have a good reason for it,\u201d Hayes said. \u201cPlease forgive me.\u201d
Prisoners have also used their last statements as platforms to speak out. Twenty raised moral quandaries<\/a> about capital punishment, with some referring to their impending deaths as \u201cunnecessary,\u201d \u201cinhumane\u201d and \u201can act of revenge.\u201d
\u201cI cannot agree with this injustice. The Bible says that you shalt not kill,\u201d said Tony Roach, who was executed in 2007<\/a> for the sexual molestation and strangulation of a woman nine years earlier.
Others tried to find rationale in the death penalty once faced with it. Jeffery Doughtie, who was executed in 2001 for killing an 80-year-old store owner and his 76-year-old wife, spent almost nine years on death row weighing \u201cwhether it is right or wrong,\u201d he said, \u201cand I don\u2019t have any answers.\u201d
Fifty-eight inmates have claimed innocence, while a handful of others have suggested there were critical facts about their cases that weren\u2019t publicly known. One prisoner, Markham Duff-Smith, called his trial unfair but also made a confession: \u201cI am the sinner of all sinners. I was responsible for the \u201975 and \u201979 cases.\u201d
Duff-Smith was executed in 1993 for arranging the murder of his mother in 1975. He had been charged with attempting to kill three other relatives in 1979 to collect a family inheritance but had never been tried.
Jim Willett, a former warden at the prison in Huntsville where inmates are put to death, oversaw 89 executions from 1998 to 2001. He described his job as unrelenting: \u201cWe did 40 executions in one year.\u201d
Twenty-five years later, the names of prisoners have faded from his memory, but their last statements have stuck. There was the inmate who spoke <\/strong>crudely to the victim\u2019s family, another who told his sister\u2019s fianc\u00e9 to take care of her right before she fainted in the chamber viewing area and another who talked extensively about his case.
\u201cI had to tell him it\u2019s time to wrap it up,\u201d Willett said. \u201cThe guy was never going to stop if we didn\u2019t make him.\u201d
Despite the unpredictability, Willett said, the tradition is necessary.
\u201cNo matter what they may say,\u201d he said, \u201cit\u2019s giving a human being an opportunity to be human one last time.\u201d
Mixed with somber messages, too, are moments when prisoners reach for levity. Inmates have referred to their favorite sports teams, cheering on the Dallas Cowboys and the Texas Rangers. Others have turned to gallows humor.
\u201cI\u2019ve been hanging around this popsicle stand way too long,\u201d said Douglas Roberts, who was executed in 2005 after he was convicted in a 1996 robbery and murder. \u201cBefore I leave, I want to tell you all. When I die, bury me deep, lay two speakers at my feet, put some headphones on my head and rock and roll me when I\u2019m dead.\u201d
Others spoke with little fanfare.
\u201cLet\u2019s do it, man,\u201d G.W. Green told the warden<\/a> in 1991 before he was executed for the 1976 robbery and shooting death of a juvenile probation officer. \u201cLock and load. Ain\u2019t life a [expletive]?\u201d
None expressed fear of dying.
Condemned inmates in Texas spend an average of 11 years on death row, according to the Department of Criminal Justice. They often find camaraderie in how they are isolated, in their protracted legal fights and in the agonizing period when their execution dates near.
Those bonds become immortalized through final words.
Inmates have called out their \u201cbrothers on the row\u201d more than two dozen times. Lisa Coleman, who was executed in 2014<\/a> for killing her girlfriend\u2019s son, encouraged other women sentenced to death to \u201ckeep their heads up.\u201d
Kristin Houl\u00e9 Cuellar, the executive director of the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, said she supports the state\u2019s gathering last statements. They serve as reminders of the \u201cripple effects\u201d that every execution can have, she said, exacting physical and emotional tolls on not only the condemned, but also the victims, families, legal teams and prison staff.
\u201cThe death penalty causes tremendous collective harm,\u201d Cuellar said, \u201cand I believe that often comes through in the last statements.\u201d
When George Hopper, an auto insurance appraiser, was executed in 2005, both his loved ones and those of the suburban Dallas nurse he killed, Rozanne Gailiunas, assembled to watch him die.
Hopper, 49, acknowledged that \u201cthe things I did changed so many lives.\u201d But while he was on death row, he turned to God.
On the gurney, he addressed Gailiunas\u2019 family<\/a>, which included her son, who was 4 when he discovered his mother\u2019s body after the 1983 crime. \u201cI can\u2019t take it back, it was an atrocity,\u201d Hopper said. \u201cI am sorry.\u201d
He then looked to another window, where his parents sat in prayer behind the glass: \u201cI love you, mom and dad.\u201d
Twice, witnesses reported, Hopper gasped as the lethal injection drugs flowed into his bloodstream. Eight minutes later, he was dead.
Erik Ortiz is a senior reporter for NBC News Digital focusing on racial injustice and social inequality.
© 2026 NBCUniversal Media, LLC<\/p>\n

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