Texas inmate wants to tell a joke at his execution

[peejay 327]

Texas inmate wants to tell joke at his execution

By MICHAEL GRACZYK

Associated Press

LIVINGSTON — Condemned prisoner Patrick Knight wants to leave them laughing.

Knight acknowledges there's nothing funny about his likely execution later this month for the fatal shooting of his neighbors, Walter and Mary Werner, almost 16 years ago outside Amarillo. But to help him come up with his final statement, Knight is accepting jokes mailed to him on Texas' death row or e-mailed to a friend who has a Web site for him. The friend then mails him the jokes.

Knight said the joke he finds the funniest will be his final statement the evening of June 26.

"I'm not trying to disrespect the Werners or anything like that," he told The Associated Press from death row. "I'm not trying to say I don't care what's going on. I'm about to die. I'm not going to sit here and whine and cry and moan and everything like that when I'm facing the punishment I've been given.

"I'm not asking for money. I'm not asking for pen pals or anything like that. All I'm asking for is jokes."

He said he's already received about 250 wisecracks.

"Lawyer jokes are real popular," he said. "Some of them are a little on the edge. I'm not going to use any profanity if I can find the one I want, or any vulgar content. It wouldn't be bad if it was a little bit on the edge. That would be cool."

Randall County Sheriff Joel Richardson thinks the whole idea is anything but cool. As chief deputy at the time of the Werners' killings, Richardson investigated the case and intends to witness Knight's execution. He said the Werners' family has already been through enough, and that Knight's attempt to make a joke at the execution is sick.

"The whole thing is not a joke to anybody here unless it is to him," Richardson said of Knight. "This tells you a little bit about the guy's character, anyway."

Richardson said that the Werners' son, who has since moved out of Texas, has said he won't speak about the case anymore.

"They don't want to draw any more attention to this guy than is possible," Richardson said.

Knight, 39, would be the last of five condemned inmates set to die in Texas over three weeks this month as the state embellishes its notoriety as the nation's most active in carrying out capital punishment.

Fourteen executions already have happened in Texas this year and if all five take place in June, the pace will be just shy of the record of 40 executions set in 2000. At least 10 other inmates already have execution dates set for the second half of the year.

Besides Knight, among those set to die this month is Cathy Lynn Henderson, who would be the fourth woman executed in Texas since the state resumed capital punishment in 1982 and the 12th nationally since the U.S. Supreme Court in 1976 allowed the death penalty to resume.

This month's series of executions is to begin Wednesday with Michael Griffith, 56, a former Harris County sheriff's deputy convicted of the October 1994 rape, robbery and fatal stabbing of Deborah Jean McCormick, 44, who worked at her family's Houston flower shop and wedding chapel where Griffith was a regular customer.

Henderson, 50, is set to die June 13 for the 1994 slaying of Brandon Baugh, a 3-month-old Austin-area child she was babysitting. Henderson has insisted the child's skull was fractured when she accidentally dropped him while trying to calm the cranky infant. His body was found 18 days after she and the child disappeared and about 60 miles to the north, buried in a field in a wine cooler box. She said she panicked and fled to her native Missouri.

On June 20, Lionell Rodriguez, 36, faces injection for the fatal shooting of a Houston woman, Tracy Gee, 22, in 1990. Rodriguez was 19 at the time of the slaying and on parole only three weeks after serving three months of a seven-year sentence for burglary. She was gunned down and her car taken as she waited at a stoplight a few blocks from home.

The following day, June 21, Gilberto Reyes, 33, is set for execution for the 1998 beating death of his ex-girlfriend, Yvette Barraz. The 19-year-old woman was hit at least six times in the head with a claw hammer, raped and strangled. She was abducted after leaving her job as a waitress at a restaurant in Muleshoe in Bailey County, a sparsely populated county northwest of Lubbock along the Texas-New Mexico border.

Knight is then scheduled to die five days later.

"I know I'm not innocent," said Knight, who believes his appeals have been exhausted. "They think they're killing me. They think they're punishing me. They've already punished me. I've already had 16 years of punishment. They're releasing me. They're letting me go. That's helping me out. That's the way I look at it."

Knight said he got the idea for a joke as his last statement after a friend, Vincent Gutierrez, was executed earlier this year and laughed from the death chamber gurney: "Where's a stunt double when you need one?"

"I'm going to go up there and tell them I'm the stunt double guy," Knight said. He said he's sharing the jokes he gets with his fellow inmates "to try to keep their hearts right and things like that."

"It's a way to get laughter back there and ease the tension," he said.

He said he prefers jokes that don't have a prison or death penalty theme.

"That depresses me," he said.

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metrop...an/4858084.html

_________________________________________________________________

Here are Texas Dept. of Criminal Justice links for more about Patrick Knight and his buddies on Death Row:

http://www.tdcj.state.tx.us/statistics/dea...list/knight.jpg

http://www.tdcj.state.tx.us/stat/offendersondrow.htm

[MissStacey 1]

Knock Knock

Who's there?

BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ.

[dalegg 143]

"Hey Warden, pull my finger"

[Alex+R 0]

Maybe I am PMSing (yes), but that story made me cry. It's not appropriate to make jokes before you are murdered by the state, but what is appropriate in that moment?

[Ban Hammer 14,269]

Maybe I am PMSing (yes), but that story made me cry. It's not appropriate to make jokes before you are murdered by the state, but what is appropriate in that moment?

that's only if one is naive enough to think he's being "murdered by the state"

he's just getting what's due to him in spades for what he gave out.

[peejay 327]

Maybe I am PMSing (yes), but that story made me cry. It's not appropriate to make jokes before you are murdered by the state, but what is appropriate in that moment?

That's the reason I posted those links at the bottom of the article...so folks can see how these inmates got into this situation they are in.

BTW...the state will kill them...not murder them.

As for myself...I don't feel comfortable with the death penalty in many situations. There have been too many that have been convicted, sentenced to death, and later exonerated. I have no problem with the death penalty as long as the state kills the person that actually did the dirty deed.

Here is a link to Lionell Rodriguez mentioned in the article. He really is guilty and deserves what the state will give him. He earned it. Don't waste you tears on people like that. Cry for his victim, Tracy Gee.

http://www.tdcj.state.tx.us/statistics/dea...st/rodrigez.jpg

[Alex+R 0]

I don't care what he did; an eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind, so they say. I feel sad for his victims, of course, and I do not doubt that this man was (or still is) a monster of a man. Whoever kills him is just as bad as he is, though. It's murder to me.

[William33 110]

Knock Knock

Who's there?

BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ.

He is getting what he deserves. People who murder, don't deserve to enjoy life.

[Jenn! 918]

People who murder, don't deserve to enjoy life.

Exactly. Isn't that why we have prisons?

[Alex+R 0]

People who murder, don't deserve to enjoy life.

Exactly. Isn't that why we have prisons?

There are much worse fates than death (and believe it or not, they're cheaper for the US taxpayer to carry out, although that, to me, is hardly as important as the principle).

[William33 110]

People who murder, don't deserve to enjoy life.

Exactly. Isn't that why we have prisons?

Being alive unto itself is enjoyment. Haven't you heard? inmates can read books, watch television and appreciate the outdoors.

Can the murdered people? Not from 6 feet under.

[Ban Hammer 14,269]

I don't care what he did; an eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind, so they say. I feel sad for his victims, of course, and I do not doubt that this man was (or still is) a monster of a man. Whoever kills him is just as bad as he is, though. It's murder to me.

would you feel that way if his victim was rey?

[Alex+R 0]

I don't care what he did; an eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind, so they say. I feel sad for his victims, of course, and I do not doubt that this man was (or still is) a monster of a man. Whoever kills him is just as bad as he is, though. It's murder to me.

would you feel that way if his victim was rey?

I would want that man to suffer for what he did. Death seems like an easy out to me. And it's certainly not our place to say we're killing in the name of justice.

I don't think it's right for you to insinuate that I don't care about victims and victims' families. That's incredibly unfair and of course not very well thought out.

[Ban Hammer 14,269]

I don't care what he did; an eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind, so they say. I feel sad for his victims, of course, and I do not doubt that this man was (or still is) a monster of a man. Whoever kills him is just as bad as he is, though. It's murder to me.

would you feel that way if his victim was rey?

I would want that man to suffer for what he did. Death seems like an easy out to me. And it's certainly not our place to say we're killing in the name of justice.

I don't think it's right for you to insinuate that I don't care about victims and victims' families. That's incredibly unfair and of course not very well thought out.

yes, alex, i'm sure he'll suffer with his hbo, place to sleep, and free medical and dental care

while on the subject of not very well thought out, did you ever consider perhaps the victim's family wants him executed?

[natty bumppo 297]

yes, alex, i'm sure he'll suffer with his hbo, place to sleep, and free medical and dental care

while on the subject of not very well thought out, did you ever consider perhaps the victim's family wants him executed?

don’t forget the state sponsored conjugal visits