Executed Inmate’s Last Words: Vote Obama

Before being put to death by lethal injection Thursday morning, Mississippi inmate and convicted murderer Dale Leo Bishop apologized to the family of his victim and urged those present to vote for Barack Obama.

“For those who oppose the death penalty and want to see it end, our best bet is to vote for Barack Obama because his supporters have been working behind the scenes to end this practice,” Bishop said shortly before he was executed, according to the Clarion Ledger.

Bishop was convicted for murder in 2000.

Obama actually supports the death penalty, though he has criticized some of its uses.

The Illinois Democrat disagreed with a recent Supreme Court decision that banned the death penalty from being applied in a case involving the rape of a child. “I have said repeatedly that I think that the death penalty should be applied in very narrow circumstances for the most egregious of crimes,” Obama said at the time.

As an Illinois state senator, Obama helped rewrite the state’s death penalty laws after DNA evidence freed dozens of Illinois convicts on death row.