Last Rights: 13 Fatal Encounters With the State's Justice

Reverend Joseph Ingle’s moving book argues eloquently and passionately against the death penalty, serving as an enduring testament to the inmates who have touched his life. Ingle, a counselor to prisoners on Death Row since 1974, chronicles his experiences working with 12 condemned men and one condemned woman each of whom has since been executed.  For more than three decades, he has spread his anti-death penalty message across the country, doggedly referring to what the state calls “execution” as “killing.” A man of simple faith, Ingle refuses to see these inmates as anything less than human beings.

With a chapter devoted to each of the inmates, Ingle memorializes them without attempting to cleanse the record of their crimes.  Instead, he emphasizes the necessity of viewing them as individuals: “The public needs to see them for who they were and how their love enriched my life,” Ingle writes.  “To their memories and for those who loved them, I offer their stories to the world.”  The powerful original foreword by the late William Styron is now preceded by a new introduction by M*A*S*H* star, turned-death-penalty-abolitionist, Mike Farrell.