HUNTSVILLE, Texas – Condemned prisoner Patrick Knight was executed Tuesday evening for the deaths of an Amarillo-area couple without delivering on a promise to tell a joke in his final statement.
Patrick Knight has been soliciting jokes in the mail and on a Web site, saying his humor was intended to raise the spirits of other inmates. He said he received as many as 1,300.
But when the moment came, Knight thanked God for his friends and asked for help for innocent men on death row. He named several he said were innocent.
After expressing love to some friends, he said, “I said I was going to tell a joke. Death has set me free. That’s the biggest joke. I deserve this.”
“And the other joke is that I am not Patrick Bryan Knight and y’all can’t stop this execution now. Go ahead, I’m finished.”
Nine minutes later, he was pronounced dead.
Prison spokeswoman Michelle Lyons disputed Knight’s mistaken identity claim.
“We fingerprint them when they come over,” she said.
Knight was sentenced to death for the fatal shootings of Walter Werner, 58, and his wife, Mary Ann, 56. Knight lived in a trailer next door to the couple just outside Amarillo.
When the Werners arrived home Aug. 26, 1991, they found Knight and a friend, Robert Bradfield, waiting inside for them. The two men held the couple captive in their basement through the next day, then drove the victims several miles away and shot each in the head.
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