Texas executed its 500th death row prisoner last week: Kimberly McCarthy, a 52-year-old woman convicted of murder. Resuming capital punishment in December 1982 after an earlier Supreme Court decision, the state has put to death more prisoners than the next several states combined. But for Texas’s condemned, their final words will live on forever—not on a note scribbled to family members or scratched into the paint of a cell wall—but on the Internet.

Texas has been collecting and posting inmates’ final words on the Texas Department of Criminal Justice website for years, and officials told The New York Times that there were 3 million page views of final words last year alone. Only California comes close to resembling the archive that Texas offers.

God, hear our prayer. We want to give thanks for this day. I can't do that prayer, that prayer is not right for ya'lls family or my family. Please forgive me. I love ya'll. OK Warden, I am ready. I'm going home. I love ya'll. I'm feeling it. —Bobby Lee Hines, 2012

The chilling database allows visitors to view both written and verbal statements, information about the offender’s crime, age, date of execution, and the county the crime took place in.


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