Written statement:
“There’s only one person on earth lower than me and that’s the one who told this affair to my mother.”

— George Hoffman, convicted of murder and robbery, hanging, Montana.
Executed August 29, 1933

Hoffman did not want his eighty-two-year-old mother to know that her son was a murderer, so he told her that he was in California. An unidentified person told Mrs. Hoffman the truth in time for her to visit Hoffman twice before the execution, much to his displeasure. Hoffman made no final statement on the gallows and left only this note.

“In the presence of God, the possessor of heaven and earth, I lift up my hands and solemnly protest I am innocent of what is laid to my charge. I appeal to the great God for my non- knowledge of Hughson, his wife, or the creature that was hanged with them [Peggy Carey, a prostitute]. I never saw them, living, dying, or dead; nor ever had I any knowledge or confederacy with white or black, as to any plot; . . . and I protest that the witnesses were perjured; I never knew them but at my trial.”

— Rev. John Urie, convicted of conspiracy, hanging, colonial New York.
Executed August 29, 1741

Urie was a clergyman and a schoolteacher who was accused of having incited a group of slaves into arson and robbery. The Hughson he references was a tavern owner who was also convicted of inciting arson. Hughson and Urie were both hanged when New York was gripped by a wave of paranoia that its slaves were seconds away from overthrowing their masters. The colony ended up hanging eighteen slaves and burning eleven who were implicated in the conspiracy, as well as hanging four white people: Urie, Hughson and his wife, and a prostitute who frequented Urie’s bar. The order to
execute the slaves read in part, “You have grown wanton with excess of liberty and your idleness has proved your ruin.”

A circled passage in the section “He Is Sentenced to Death,” in Plato’s “Apology”:
“The hour of departure has arrived and we go our ways,
I to die and you to live. Which is better God only knows.”

— James Dukes, convicted of murder, electric chair, Illinois.
Executed August 24, 1962

Dukes was executed for killing Detective John Blyth Sr., who had pursued him after he had beaten his girlfriend in church and shot two other men who tried to stop him. On Dukes’s execution day, Detective Daniel Rolewicz, who took part in the final gun battle, told a newspaperman, “I’ve been waiting a long time for this night.”

Dukes made no oral statement but left behind a copy of the “Apology” for the press.