“We might as well have gone in there six years ago.”

— Louis Smith (aka Gene E. Garland) , convicted of murder, gas chamber, California.
Executed February 8, 1957

Smith, along with accomplice John Allen, was convicted of killing inmate/ barber Willard Burton while all three were serving life sentences in Folsom Prison. The evening before their execution, Allen and Smith played pinochle for hours with a guard.

“I love you, Mom. Good-bye.”

— Jeffrey Motley, convicted of kidnapping, robbery and murder, lethal injection, Texas.
Executed February 7, 1995

A former Wisconsinite and air-conditioning repairman, Motley had spent five years in jail for burglary. Motley abducted a woman and forced her to withdraw three hundred dollars from a bank, then shot her with a 12-gauge shotgun.

“I am being charged under article 19.83 of the Texas Penal Code of murder with the promise of remuneration. That means they got to have three people, the one that paid, the one that killed, and the deceased. And the alleged remunerator is out on the streets, so how come I’m being executed today, without a remunerator? This is a great American justice. So if you don’t think they won’t, believe me they will. Ain’t no telling who gonna be next. That’s all I have to say…Bye.”

— Martin Sauceda Vega, convicted of murder, lethal injection Texas.
Executed January 26, 1999

Martin Vega confessed to a “murder-for-hire” in 1988, three years after the body of James Mims was found shot. Mims’s wife, Linda, had offered to marry Vega and share the $250,000 life insurance policy if he killed her husband.