“I will raise mine eye unto the hills, whence cometh my help. . .”

— Roswell C. F. Smith, convicted of murder, hanging, Illinois.
Executed February 13, 1915

Smith killed a four-year-old girl, Hazel Weinstein, by luring her into an alley with candy and then strangling her with a strip of her dress. He returned the body to her home, where her parents  mmediately contacted the police. Called a “physical defective and degenerate” by the Chicago Daily Tribune, Smith received several mental health examinations but was found to have been mentally solvent at the time of the murder.

“The Polunsky dungeon should be compared with the death row community as existing, not living. Why do I say this? The death row is full of isolated hearts and suppressed minds. We are filled with love looking for affection and a way to understand. I am a death row resident of the Polunsky dungeon. Why does my heart ache?…The Polunsky dungeon is what I call the Pit of Hopelessness. The terrifying thing is the U.S. is the only place, country that is the only civilized country that is free that says it will stop murder and enable justice. I ask each of you to lift up your voices to demand an end to the death penalty. If we live, we live to the Lord. If we die we die to the Lord….”

— Johnny Johnson, convicted of murder, lethal injection, Texas.
Executed February 12, 2009

The Polunsky Unit—which Johnson referred to as “the Polunsky dungeon”—is the home of death row inmates in Livingston, Texas. Johnson was sent there for killing Leah Joette Smith, forty-one, though court documents said he was tied to at least “five rape-slayings” in Texas. According to prison records, after Johnson finished his final words he began singing.

“I am a young man still. To me, life is life whether inside a penitentiary or out. I stand convicted of murder, but in my heart, I am no murderer. Here, surely, is the contingency for which the alternative penalty was planned.”

— Dewitt Cook, convicted of rape and murder, gas chamber, California.
Executed January 31, 1941

Cook, age twenty-one, listened to the radio on the last night of his life, which he spent sleepless, and come morning he refused breakfast. He had been convicted two years prior for bludgeoning to death Anya Sosoyeva, a twenty-four-year-old dancer and art student. His appeal for clemency was rejected. During his last night, he spoke with a guard. “I made up my mind,” he said. “I have to go.”