Emotional Expression and Moral Reflection in the Last Statements of White American Death Row Inmates

Abstract

Inmates’ own voices at the moment of execution remain comparatively underexplored in death and dying scholarship. Drawing on a corpus of 198 last statements published by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice between 1984 and 2021, this study examines how American death row inmates articulate emotion and moral meaning in an extreme end-of-life context. Findings indicate that emotional expressions, particularly love, gratitude, apology, and forgiveness, constitute approximately 76% of all identified expressions and dominate the communicative landscape of final statements. These utterances are characterized by predominantly positive emotional orientations, frequently reflecting moral reflection, repentance, religious reference, and concern for loved ones. Evaluative remarks further illuminate how inmates position themselves in relation to justice, responsibility, and mortality, revealing both acceptance of and tension with legal authority. By foregrounding affective positioning in institutionalized death, this study contributes to interdisciplinary research on end-of-life meaning-making within penal contexts.