Letter: Last Words in Texas: What the Condemned Say

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Re "From America's Busiest Death Chamber, a Catalog of Last Rants, Pleas and Apologies" (news article, June 30):

At first glance, it's odd that states like Texas have retained the custom of offering condemned men and women the opportunity to make final statements before their executions. Over the last 200 years, executions gradually transformed from carnival-like events into bureaucratic affairs. Last statements seem incongruous with a modern execution process that prizes predictability and efficiency.

But the preservation of this old custom has done important work in maintaining the retributive spirit of executions. Strapped to a gurney after years of confinement in a highly regimented setting, today's condemned inmates are much more likely to appear institutionalized than their predecessors.

And using equipment that we normally encounter in hospitals, executioners are more likely to resemble medical personnel than representatives of an aggrieved citizenry.

By asking inmates to make one final, existential choice — a statement before dying — Texas is implicitly reminding witnesses that it isn't euthanizing sick animals but punishing human beings who deserve what's about to happen to them. And by allowing for the appearance of "a glimmer of the humanity," as you put it, in executed offenders, its executions don't seem as terrifyingly technocratic as they otherwise would.

DANIEL LaCHANCE
Amherst, Mass., June 30, 2013

The writer is an assistant professor of history at Emory University.

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