This week in 1999

“Ah, just, ah, sorry y’all. I . . . tried everything I could to get in touch with y’all to express how sorry I am. I, I never was right after that incident happened…I was raised by the California Youth Authority. I can’t really pinpoint where it started, what happened, but really believe that’s just the bottom line: what happened to me was in California. I was in their reformatory schools and penitentiary, but they create monsters in there. That’s it, I have nothing else to say.”

— David Long, convicted of murder, lethal injection, Texas.
Executed December 8, 1999

Long was convicted of the 1986 murders of three Texas women, an act he later described as “satanic.” Two days before he was to be executed, Long attempted suicide and was admitted to intensive care. His public defenders claimed they were not granted adequate funding to fully assess Long’s mental condition during his trial, yet thengovernor George W. Bush funded a full medical team to fly with Long to his execution. Immediately before he received lethal injection, Long vomited the charcoal solution used to detoxify his body
of drugs.