This week in 2004

“…I am not angry but I am disappointed that I was denied justice. But I am happy that I was afforded you all as family and friends. I love you all. Please just keep the struggle going. . . . I am just sorry and I am not as strong as I thought I was going to be…You are all my family. Please keep my memory alive.”

— Dominique Jerome Green, convicted of murder, lethal injection,Texas.
Executed October 26, 2004

Green and three accomplices robbed and shot Andrew Lastrapes Jr. to death, prosecutors said, in a parking lot. Many of Lastrapes’s relatives opposed the execution, and his widow, Bernatte Luckett Lastrapes, wrote to the Texas governor and parole board in support of Green: “All of us have forgiven Dominique for what happened and want to give him another chance at life. Everyone deserves another chance.” Green was the subject of Thomas Cahill’s book “A Saint on Death Row.”