When a person accused of a crime is convicted and sentenced to capital punishment, the person can make a final statement, or express their last words, before being executed. The substance of these last words may or may not have anything to do with the crime of which the condemned person has been convicted.
Final statements relevant to the alleged crime in question may run the gamut from maintenance of innocence to self-incrimination, and their tone may likewise be anywhere from conciliatory to provocative. For example, one may
maintain one's innocence while nevertheless forgiving one's executioners (see Ronald Clark O'Bryan below);
maintain one's legal or at least moral innocence while haranguing the authorities and/or, as with some political criminals especially in the era of public executions, attempting to ensure one's status as a martyr (see Madame Roland below);
admit or readmit one's guilt and apologize to one's victims (see Arthur Gary Bishop below); or
(re)admit one's commission of the alleged offense in the course of mocking that offense's victims and their injuries.
Other subject matters of final statements may include
requests to one's executioner(s) for a quick and/or painless death (see Ronald Ryan and Irma Grese below);
indifference toward death, especially given its inevitability for and universality among even persons not executed (see Robert Alton Harris below)
affirmative welcoming of one's fate for reasons other than or broader than a desire to make atonement, especially including the perception of death as a release from suffering (see the second half of the first statement attributed to Sir Walter Raleigh below);
contempt toward authorities and/or society for reasons unrelated to or broader than one's being convicted and sentenced (see John Wayne Gacy and Johnny Garrett below);
challenges encouraging and implicitly ratifying the actions of one's executioners, usually to demonstrate bravery in the face of death in embodiment of an ethical ideal and/or establish a historical record of one's having done so (see the first half of the first statement attributed to Sir Walter Raleigh below); and
jokes, usually to demonstrate equanimity or even lightheartedness toward or contempt for death, and in those cases usually to embody an ethical ideal, make a final demonstration of one's wit, and/or establish a historical record of one's having done either or both (see James French and William Palmer below)
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