On Might 15, Florida carried out its fifth execution of 2025, probably the most of any state up to now this yr. On that date, it put Glen Rogers to dying by deadly injection.
Rogers was executed for murdering Tina Marie Cribbs in 1995. Cribbs was, as USA At this time reviews, “one among 4 single moms of their 30s with reddish hair who fell sufferer to the so-called ‘Casanova Killer.’” He was referred to as that due to “his attractiveness and skill to appeal his future victims.”
That Rogers liked the limelight explains why, quickly after he was arrested for killing Cribbs, Rogers claimed that he, not O.J. Simpson, killed Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman in June 1994 and insisted that he had murdered a complete of seventy folks throughout his profession as a serial killer. Nonetheless, his execution may need gone off with little notoriety, however for what he mentioned when given the prospect to utter final phrases within the minutes earlier than he died.
He started in a fairly standard manner by expressing his love and gratitude to his spouse, earlier than telling the relations of his victims, “I do know there’s loads of questions that you simply want solutions to. I promise you, within the close to future the questions shall be answered and I hope indirectly will carry you closure.”
After which in a really weird twist on the ritual of final phrases, Rogers mentioned: “President Trump, hold making America nice. I’m able to go.”
These phrases made headlines throughout the nation and around the globe.
They’re a reminder of simply how unusual it’s that within the minutes earlier than the state executes somebody, it provides them a chance to handle the witnesses to the continuing and the world past the execution chamber. The ritual of the final phrases is a vestige of one other time, and it serves to sanctify the unholy apply of capital punishment by providing what seems to be a humane gesture.
It’s time to cease asking condemned folks to reap the benefits of that gesture and fulfill the general public’s morbid fascination with what folks like Rogers say earlier than they meet their maker. That fascination is definitely documented.
The web is stuffed with websites that record the final phrases of people who find themselves about to die. Let me supply just a few examples right here.
In March 2024, Folks.com posted a narrative below the alluring headline: “The Final Phrases of Notorious American Killers.” It begins, “For generations, the American public has been fascinated by the tales of killers, with their crimes usually splashed throughout infinite headlines and immortalized in quite a few movies and TV reveals. These intrigued hold onto each replace, from the second they’re caught till their final breath.”
“As many of those criminals face the last word punishment by way of the dying penalty,” Folks continues, “the general public experiences a…morbid curiosity about their ultimate moments. Via their official final statements—whether or not poetic reflections, crude feedback, or ominous one-liners—we’ve gained some perception into their minds.”
Perception, not a lot. The final phrases of publicity-seeking folks like Rogers are performances, revealing extra about their need to shock and go away the general public questioning about what they mentioned and why they mentioned it than an understanding of what made them tick.
Take what Robert Alton Harris, who kidnapped and killed 16-year-old boys in California, mentioned earlier than dying in San Quentin State Jail’s gasoline chamber in 1992: “You generally is a king or a road sweeper, however everybody dances with the Grim Reaper.”
Appears easy sufficient, however it was hardly a revelation of why he had performed what he did or his innermost ideas.
Quick ahead to 2001 when Timothy McVeigh, who was convicted of the deadliest home terrorist act in U.S. historical past, the bombing of Alfred P. Murrah Federal Constructing in Oklahoma Metropolis, Oklahoma, mentioned earlier than his execution. Quoting from William Ernest Henley’s poem, “Invictus,” McVeigh offered the next dying declaration: “It issues not how strait the gate/How charged with punishments the scroll/I’m the grasp of my destiny/I’m the captain of my soul.”
Everywhere in the nation, commentators supplied their very own speculations about what McVeigh meant.
Or, one yr later, one other celeb killer, Aileen Wuornos, a intercourse employee who murdered six of her “shoppers,” mentioned “I’d identical to to say, I’m crusing with the rock, and I’ll be again, like Independence Day, with Jesus, June sixth. Just like the film, massive mothership and all. I’ll be again,” earlier than being put to dying in Florida.
In a manner, she did come again when, in 2004, a documentary was launched entitled “Aileen – Life and Dying of a Serial Killer.” It featured her final phrases together with ideas about how Wuornos’s obsession with movies defined them.
We will make sure that when and if Folks updates its story, what Rogers mentioned final week shall be featured prominently.
And for folks whose curiosity concerning the final phrases of much less infamous killers, the state of Texas provides a web site that includes what everybody executed there since 1982 needed to say. It was final up to date on April 29, after it put Moises Mendoza to dying for a 2004 homicide.
“To Mark, Pam, Austin, Uncle Troy, and Jose,” Mendoza mentioned, “I’m sorry for having robbed you of Rachelle’s life. To Avery, who I do know will not be right here, I robbed you of a mom. I’m sorry for that.”
He continued, “I do know nothing that I might ever say or do would ever make up for that. I need you to know I’m honest, I apologize. Thanks for being right here as we speak. To all my family members, I like you. I’m with you, I’m nicely and at peace you understand that I’m nicely and every thing is love. (Spanish) Don’t kill them with kindness heal them with kindness and love. All the time love, love, love. Thanks, Warden.”
Mendoza’s was the form of “gallows confession“ that, for a very long time, has helped to lend legitimacy to state killing. As legislation professor Linda Meyer notes, “Final phrases…have been features of executions for so long as human historical past information” and have been a part of executions within the Anglo-American world since 1388.
My very own analysis on newspaper protection of late Nineteenth-century public executions in the USA means that they adopted a strict system that positioned the condemned on the middle of their tales. Information reviews usually described the lead-up to the execution and supplied detailed accounts of the prisoner’s gallows speech.
At this time, any story of an execution that omits regardless of the condemned mentioned would appear odd. The general public needs to know, and the federal government needs to inform them.
However sufficient is sufficient.
We don’t must know the condemned’s final phrases. There may be additionally, Meyer rightly observes, “a refined type of torture …inherent in requiring or anticipating significant speech from one going through dying.”
Their professions of affection, confessions of guilt, pleas for forgiveness, or, as in Rogers’s case, ultimate political commentaries, serve solely, as Meyer notes, “to justify the state’s killing” and make the inhuman act of cold-blooded killing appear a contact extra humane. That’s the reason it’s time to put an finish to the apply of asking for, recording, and disseminating the final phrases of individuals the state places to dying.
