Posted 6/04/2007 05:35:00 PM by Douglas

Cold and arrogant? Maybe. Insolent? Absolutely, but the inner smart-ass in me has to laugh at this one.

Condemned prisoner Patrick Knight wants to leave them laughing.

Knight acknowledges there's nothing funny about his likely execution later this month for the fatal shooting of his neighbors, Walter and Mary Werner, almost 16 years ago outside Amarillo. But to help him come up with his final statement, Knight is accepting jokes mailed to him on Texas' death row or e-mailed to a friend who has a web site for him. The friend then mails him the jokes.

Knight said the joke he finds the funniest will be his final statement the evening of June 26.

"I'm not trying to disrespect the Werners or anything like that," he told The Associated Press from death row. "I'm not trying to say I don't care what's going on. I'm about to die. I'm not going to sit here and whine and cry and moan and everything like that when I'm facing the punishment I've been given.

"I'm not asking for money. I'm not asking for pen pals or anything like that. All I'm asking for is jokes."

There's nothing funny about the State taking anyone's life, and there's even less funny about double murder, but if you are afforded the opportunity of a "last word" because you're about to be executed at the hands of the State, you should be allowed to say whatever the hell you please.

Randall County Sheriff Joel Richardson thinks the whole idea is anything but cool. As chief deputy at the time of the Werners' killings, Richardson investigated the case and intends to witness Knight's execution. He said the Werners' family has already been through enough, and that Knight's attempt to make a joke at the execution is sick.

"The whole thing is not a joke to anybody here unless it is to him," Richardson said of Knight. "This tells you a little bit about the guy's character, anyway."

Lighten up, Sheriff. Whatever you think of the man's character (such that it is), he's the one staring a lethal injection in the arm. Is he a total sociopath? Ida know, but something I find very human about a dying man's last words going something like this: "Two Jews walk into a bar. . . "

Of course, the funniest joke in the world is hard to beat: