I just read the paper tonight and the state is putting another murderer to death. The article read that the prisoner would be put to death by lethal injection at 12:01 tomorrow morning. My question is why are a lot of executions set for one minute past midnight, so early in the morning? Maybe I am getting old but it just seems like an unholy hour for everyone to be up puttin people to death.
Does the condemmed have any say ( within moments) about the time of execution…by that I mean lets say his relatives are there and he wants to delay till 12:02 or 3 to say one more goodbye…or once he is strapped on the gurney for the injection can he have an unlimited amount of time to say his last words? I have never read an account of the warden saying, “Any last words? You have 30 seconds.”
Just a guess, but I think they set a particular date and they do it as early as possible on that date.
As far as saying one more good-bye, I’m sure that by the time they get to that part of the process the condemned has already made all the arrangements he can. My guess is that a lot of small delays at that point would be additional cruelty.
And I doubt if anyone in that position can come up with a real zinger for last words at that point.
“To do her justice, I can’t see that she could have found anything nastier to say if she’d thought it out with both hands for a fortnight.”
Busman’s Honeymoon
Dorothy L. Sayers
I read the biography of Britain’s greatest hangman. He studied and mastered his trade. He could enter a condemned person’s cell as the clock began striking midnight, strap the arms, march the person out of the cell and into the adjoining execution chamber, position the subject while his assistant strapped the legs, hood the head, place the noose, and throw the trap before the clock finished striking twelve. He hung a man in Ireland once and never returned because two priests delayed the hanging for two or three minutes while they tried to extract a confession of guilt from the hooded man and, in the opinion of our humble civil servant, that was torture. So yeah, dawdling around for last words is Hollywood shit. They may give the condemned a moment, in some of the few places left in the world where civil societies execute people (no last words in Japan or Russia), if he wants it, but by that stage of the game it is all just a fast formal process. “Dead man walking”.
i would just start singing: “tiiiimme is on my siidde. yes it is…” >:)
eggo
(btw i like the disable smilies option)
I remember reading also that one of the reasons scheduling executions at midnight was to diminish the number of protesters/supporters hanging outside prison gates, but I don’t have firm evidence of that statement.
Aren’t there some present to serve as witness for the State? (Not including any members of the involved parties). I’ve heard that in some States, the exact time of execution is not set precisely - maybe to stop protests? Unsure!
There are also some witnesses representing the public (reporters, usually). When executions moved indoors (mainly for reasons of taste), some people pointed out that the idea of having executions in private seemed just a little too much like Secret Police, so the new laws (at least in many states) specifically provide for some people to be there to make it “public”.
John W. Kennedy
“Compact is becoming contract; man only earns and pays.”
– Charles Williams
I heard that people are executed in the early morning to minimize the possability of last-minute appeals. Say, a murderer is scheduled to be executed on Feb 15th. To make 11th hour legal injunctions less likely, the murderer is executed as soon as Feb 15 begins; that is, right after midnight.
–It was recently discovered that research causes cancer in rats.
I think its to save the state the $40 or so it costs to house an inmate each day.
j/k…like many traditions that go back so far it may well remain shrouded in obscurity. Although some of the explanations sound pretty good, we will probably never really know.
“Go back so far”? Executions moved indoors in the 19th century. It’s not as though newspapers hadn’t been invented yet.
John W. Kennedy
“Compact is becoming contract; man only earns and pays.”
– Charles Williams