“Judge, I hope to meet you in heaven.”

— William Carey, convicted of murder, firing squad, Arkansas.
Executed July 29, 1864

Carey was executed, along with three other “bushwackers,” for leading a force of twenty-plus men disguised in Union uniforms and killing eight federal cavalrymen. At age nineteen, Carey was the youngest of the condemned. Before his death, he confessed to killing more than twenty-one men and waging a private war against the North, which also made him an outlaw among Confederates. On the day of his execution, Carey and three other men were taken from the jail to stand in a line beside their coffins. While shaking the judge advocate’s hand, Carey delivered his final words.

When asked how he felt:
“I feel like an innocent man.”

— William B. Sheppard, convicted of murder, hanging, California.
Executed July 28, 1854

When Henry Day would not grant Sheppard permission to marry his daughter, prosecutors said, Sheppard stabbed him in the abdomen. He died. But Sheppard maintained his innocence, claiming that a stranger attacked both men and then leaped into the wharf to escape. Tried and found guilty twice, he went to the gallows, where an estimated audience of eight to ten thousand sent him off with “rude jests” and “rabid laughter.”

“Everybody has to die sometime, so . . . let’s get on with the killing.”

— Kevin Conner, convicted of murder, lethal injection, Indiana.
Executed July 27, 2005

Dubbed “Iceman” because of his cold demeanor, Connor requested that his friends sell souvenir T-shirts emblazoned with an ice block and a knife. He spent eighteen years on death row for an alcohol-fueled triple murder of friends, and he ultimately asked not to be reprieved. To Indiana governor Mitch Daniels he wrote: “Killing a person is far more honest and humane than imposed repression under the guise of justice in the penal system.”