The last words of the dying have a special status in most cultures. There is a particular quality about the last words of those who are about to be executed. The perfect truthfulness, universally acknowledged in the utterances of the dying, also holds the ultimate resolution of the battle between the individual and the state. The state tries to achieve a moral victory over the condemned. The state is victorious when the criminal, in his last words, acknowledges his guilt, seeks forgiveness from God and man, and accepts the validity of his fate. Last words that threaten the state's victory are claims of innocence that call into question issues of justice and the irreversibility of capital punishment. Last words that humanize the offender as he says goodbye to family members also undermine the sense that the state is a wise dispenser of just punishments. The sense that justified punishment is properly administered to an incorrigible villain can easily become in the public mind the brutal martyrdom of a fellow human being. Although many want to reintroduce capital punishment in those countries that have abolished it, politicians are reluctant to do so, largely because they cannot afford to expose themselves to the immediate or long-term reconstruction of a brave or pitiful public death, often symbolized in the last words of those killed by the state. 6 notes and 29 references