“I go forward now on wings built by the love and support of my family and friends. I go with a peace of mind that comes from never having taken a human life. I forgive those who have hardened their hearts to the truth and I pray they ask forgiveness for they know not what they do. This is not a death, it is a lynching.”

— Marlin Gray, convicted of murder, lethal injection, Missouri.
Executed October 26, 2005

Gray and three companions raped two girls, then shoved them off the Chain of Rocks Bridge in St. Louis in 1991. The girls’ cousin was told to jump or be pushed off the bridge; he survived the jump and testified against the killers. Gray was executed first out of the group; another accomplice was also sentenced to death; a third received life without parole; and the fourth was sentenced to thirty years. Gray appeared to mouth the words “I love you” to witnesses shortly before the needle was injected into his arm.

“…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.”

“With my comrades I fought! With them I die!”

— Jean Baptiste Noyan, convicted of treason, firing squad, Louisiana.
Executed October 25, 1769

Noyan was of one five leaders executed in the Rebellion of 1768, a revolt by local settlers to stop the handover of the French-controlled Louisiana territory to Spain. Noyan was sentenced to hang on the same day as four other French ex-patriots, but there was no public executioner to drop the gallows. Noyan was marched into New Orleans’ Place d’Armes with the others but, while handcuffed, was offered clemency from the governor. Noyan, a nephew of the founder of New Orleans, refused.