(Thanks to Robert Elder of Last Words of the Executed — the blog, and the book — for the guest post. This post originally appeared on the Last Words blog. Fans of this here site are highly likely to enjoy following Elder’s own pithy, almanac-style collection of last words on the scaffold. -ed.)
“For almost nine years I have thought about the death penalty, whether it is right or wrong and I don’t have any answers. But I don’t think the world will be a better or safer place without me. If you had wanted to punish me you would have killed me the day after, instead of killing me now. You are not hurting me now. I have had time to get ready, to tell my family goodbye, to get my life where it needed to be. It started with a needle and it is ending with a needle.”
— Jeffrey Doughtie, convicted of robbery and murder, lethal injection, Texas.
Executed August 16, 2001
Doughtie had a $400-a-day drug habit, which he financed by selling stolen property. He had once worked for the antique store in Corpus Christi where he sold much of his loot. One day, after shooting a mix of heroin and cocaine, Doughtie beat the store’s proprietors to death with a piece of metal tubing. He confessed to the murders.
On this day..
- 1820: Rebecca Worlock, arsenic poisoner
- 1794: Charles-Louis Richard
- 1704: Roland Laporte, posthumously, and five aides, humously
- 1943: Gunnar Eilifsen, good cop
- 1944: Fusilles de la Cascade du Bois de Boulogne
- 1817: Not Hall or Read, prosecuted for blood-money
- 1883: Ah Yung
- 1527: Leonhard Kaiser, Lutheran
- 1851: Col. William Logan Crittenden, nephew of the Attorney General
- 1878: Max Hödel
- 1972: Mohamed Oufkir
- 1894: Sante Geronimo Caserio, anarchist assassin
The world would be a better place without ANY endorsers of violence (state-sanctioned or not). But God, in God’s Wisdom, clearly has a purpose for them I can’t see…
He was wrong. The world became a better place the moment he was gone.