— James Dukes, convicted of murder, electric chair, Illinois.
Executed August 24, 1962

Dukes was executed for killing Detective John Blyth Sr., who had pursued him after he had beaten his girlfriend in church and shot two other men who tried to stop him. On Dukes’s execution day, Detective Daniel Rolewicz, who took part in the final gun battle, told a newspaperman, “I’ve been waiting a long time for this night.”

Dukes made no oral statement but left behind a copy of the “Apology” for the press.

A moment later, in English:
 “Farewell, my wife and child and all my friends.”

After the death mask had been fitted:
 “Farewell, mia madre!” [Farewell, my mother!]

— Ferdinando Nicola Sacco, convicted of murder, electric chair, Massachusetts.
Executed August 23, 1927

Sacco and friend Bartolomeo Vanzetti, both Italian immigrants, stood trial for killing Alessandro Berardelli, a security guard, and Frederick Parmenter, a pay clerk, during an armed robbery in 1920. The controversial case gripped the nation, as both men were Galleanists, members of an Italian anarchist group suspected in a string of bombings. Numerous books have since been written questioning the guilt or innocence of the men. Their case was included in the 1992 book “In Spite of Innocence” among almost two dozen cases in which the editors believed “an innocent person was executed.”

Just before execution:
“I wish to forgive some people for what they are doing to me.”

— Bartolomeo Vanzetti, convicted of murder, electric chair, Massachusetts.
Executed August 23, 1927

Vanzetti immigrated to the United States when he was twenty years old. He sold fish and washed dishes before becoming involved in leftwing politics and protesting World War I. He had been in America for a decade before meeting Nicola Sacco at an anarchists’ meeting. In 1977, Massachusetts governor Michael Dukakis stopped short of exonerating the pair but declared: “Any stigma and disgrace should be forever removed from the names of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti. We are not here to say whether these men are guilty or innocent. We are here to say that the high standards of justice, which we in Massachusetts take such pride in, failed Sacco and Vanzetti.”

An interesting postscript: A letter from famed novelist and muckraker Upton Sinclair (“The Jungle”) surfaced in 2005. While doing research for Boston, his two-volume “documentary novel” of the Sacco and Vanzetti case, he consulted with Fred Moore, one of their attorneys. “Alone in a hotel room with Fred, I begged him to tell me the full truth,” Lewis wrote. “He then told me that the men were guilty, and he told me in every detail how he had framed a set of alibis for them.”

— David Gibbs, convicted of murder, lethal injection,Texas.
Executed August 23, 2000

Gibbs, a self-described country gentleman, confessed to the rape and murders of two mentally handicapped women. In the end, he expressed regret, apologizing to Mickey Bryant, brother of one of the victims. “I don’t believe in hitting women,” Gibbs insisted before he was executed.

— David Castillo, convicted of murder, lethal injection, Texas.
Executed August 23, 1998

Castillo, an Illinoisan, served time in prison for aggravated robbery and was released on a bench warrant before being convicted for stabbing a liquor store cashier, fifty-nine-year-old Clarencio Champion, during a robbery. After Castillo demanded cash, the clerk resisted, and Castillo stabbed him in the chest and abdomen and slashed him across the face. The victim died a week later.

— Carl Kelly, convicted of murder, lethal injection, Texas.
Executed August 20, 1993

Kelly, initially sentenced to prison for robbery, was released before the end of his term but couldn’t maintain his good behavior on the outside. Within the year, he was wanted for robbery and multiple murders. Kelly was convicted of capital murder for shooting a convenience store clerk and another man, then throwing their bodies off a cliff. His accomplice received a life sentence for murder with a deadly weapon.

— Randy Woolls, convicted of murder, lethal injection, Texas.
Executed August 20, 1986

Woolls struck, stabbed, and set fire to ticket-taker Betty Stotts during the robbery of a drive-in theater. He said he was under the influence of Valium and beer at the time. During his execution, he helped technicians find a vein they could use for the injection.

— George Burroughs, convicted of witchcraft, hanging, Massachusetts Bay Colony.
Executed August 19, 1692

It was believed that witches could not say the Lord’s Prayer, thus the tearful crowd reaction. Burroughs’s recitation caused concerns that “the Spectators would hinder the Execution.” But as soon as Burroughs hanged, Rev. Cotton Mather told the crowd that the prisoner was “no ordained Minister” and “the Devil has often been transformed into an Angel of Light.”

— Sylvester Adams, convicted of murder, lethal injection, South Carolina.
Executed August 18, 1995

Despite numerous appeals and a plea by his mother and death penalty opponents to commute his sentence, thirty-nine-year-old Adams was executed for the 1979 strangling death of his sixteen-year-old mildly retarded neighbor Bryan Chambers. Upon breaking into the neighbor’s home and finding no money there, he took Chambers into the woods to kill him. Adams’s jury never learned that IQ screenings indicated that he himself was mildly mentally retarded, nor did they hear that his mental condition involved sudden and unpredictable bursts of rage.

— 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.