Convicted murderer Robert Gleason, Jr, killed two fellow inmates to ensure his execution in Virginia and requested the electric chair.
Just moments before his death on Wednesday night he was asked if he had any last words and responded, “Pog Mo Thoin,” a vulgar Gaelic phrase meaning ‘kiss my ass’. Later he shouted “call my Irish buddies.”
The 42-year-old was first strapped to the wooden electric chair at his chest, arms and ankles, while seen occasionally smiling, winking and nodding at his spiritual adviser, the Richmond Times Dispatch reports.
Gleason uttered the vulgar phrase in Irish Gaelic, according to Larry Traylor, a spokesman for the Virginia Department of Corrections. The doomed man then shouted “Put me on the highway going to Jackson and call my Irish buddies. ... God bless.”
He was put to death at 9.08pm on Wednesday.
The Boston Irish American was the first executed in the US this year and the first to choose to die by electric chair execution in over two years.
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According to the Daily Mail Online, in some of the numerous interviews that he has given to The Associated Press over the years, Gleason, speaking from death row in a thick Boston accent said: ‘Why prolong it? The end results gonna be the same, The death part don’t bother me. This has been a long time coming. It’s called karma.’
Condemned Virginia inmates can choose between lethal injection and electrocution, and Gleason is the first inmate to choose electrocution since 2010.
The 42-year-old born in Lowell, Massachusetts was already serving life in prison without parole. However during his time in prison he murdered another two inmates.
He also claimed he had killed others but refused to provide details. He also claimed he was different from the other men on Virginia's death row because he only killed criminals.
He told the Associated Press “I ain't saying I'm a better person for killing criminals, but I've never killed innocent people
“I killed people that's in the same lifestyle as me, and they know, hey, these things can happen.
“Someone needs to stop it. The only way to stop me is put me on death row.”
In May 2009 he admitted to using strips, made from bed sheets, to bind and strangle 62-year-old inmate Harvey Watson, at Virginia’s Wallens Ridge state prison. Gleason remained in the cell with Watson's lifeless body for more than 15 hours before officers discovered the crime.
He admitted to tying Watson's hands without a struggle after telling him he had come up with a way for the two to escape. Court records show he taunted Watson before he strangled him by pressing a urine-soaked sponge onto his face and a sock into his mouth.
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While awaiting sentencing for this murder at a high-security prison in the mountains, home to the state's worst inmates, Gleason strangled 26-year-old Aaron A. Cooper through the wire fencing that separated their individual cages on the recreation yard.
Gleason said he asked fellow inmate Aaron A. Cooper to try on a 'religious necklace,' which Gleason threaded through a wire fence separating the two while they were in solitary recreation pens.
During court proceedings, Gleason indicated he intended to keep killing unless he was given the death penalty, according to the state Attorney General's Office. Gleason told a federal judge earlier this month he did not want a lawyer and called for his execution to proceed.
His former lawyers said Gleason suffered from mental illness and had made several suicide attempts. Their final effort to halt the execution to allow for an evaluation of his mental competency was rejected by the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday.
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Switch to the desktop site to post a comment.chuck | Apr 26, 2013, 02:06 PM EDT
Utah used to give the option of death by hanging or being shot. Great to have options. One guy took hanging because he wanted to make the State pay for building a scaffold. To all those weeping and wailing about the death penalty being a revenge killing, you don't have a clue. Try going back in your childhood. Remember seeing the pictures of some colonist in the "stocks?" That is what all punishment is about. It is a warning to others. This guy was a worthless punk, but at least he took the advice John Brown is said to have given his son: "If you can't live like a man, at least you can die like one."
hammerclaw | Apr 24, 2013, 09:40 PM EDT
He lived like a dog but he died like a man, and THAT was the Irish in him. I'll weep for his passing but toast his courage in the face of death. I should hope I make half as good a show. Any that think the death penalty is "uncivilised" are right. The easiest way to "civilise" a population is to teach them cowardness. It takes a brave people to mete out death in punishment to they who deserve it, and it's not for the faint-hearted.
cartersmate35 | Jan 25, 2013, 12:29 PM EST
I think Gleason was a person without any direction. His upbringing may have contributed to his way of life, but in the end, it is up to us to choose a better path. He has done that, and God Rest his soul.
TisEyerish | Jan 19, 2013, 02:08 AM EST
Why even publish this? Claiming him as an Irish-American isn't exactly something to be proud of.
Joe Glackin | Jan 18, 2013, 10:23 PM EST
Vengeance comes from the individual and punishment from God. To kill someone by the death penalty is revenge and uncivilized. Justice is lowered to that of the murderers act The death penalty is an emotional reaction endorsing revenge.It does not bring back the victim but dishonors their life. Killing the murderer is doing so in their victims name. The victim life is then equal to their murderers. "I do not now believe that any one of the hundreds of executions I carried out has in any way acted as a deterrent against future murder. Capital punishment, in my view, achieved nothing except revenge." Albert Pierrepoint (Brit hangman) "The flames of the capital punishment solution are fanned by misleading political rhetoric and journalistic sensationalism." Donald Cabana, former warden of Parchman. Another Irish saying "Tagann naomh on am ata caite ag taisteal an peacach ina dtodhchai " translates to "A saint comes from the past as the sinner travels into their future" Every Saint has a past as each sinner a future. We cannot judge
tombegs | Jan 18, 2013, 07:20 PM EST
An ancient (?) Irish Proverb: He who exits on his own terms has a happy death.
companion | Jan 18, 2013, 04:39 PM EST
No guns will be taken away from LAW ABIDING PEOPLE. Quit drinking the kool-aid the right wing fringe is feeding you.
Scrivner | Jan 18, 2013, 03:29 PM EST
But at least he did not use a gun. Will the current Administration please keep that in mind as they craft a byzentine bureacracy to disarm citizens.
Proud Canadian2 | Jan 18, 2013, 02:28 PM EST
Another example of why the death penalty shoud be abolshed. These guys want to die but don't have the guts to do it themselves. This creep should have been locked in a cage no bigger than a bathroom for ever, that would have been more punishment then a quick death, but like dallas75216 said his punishment has only begun so I guess if you look at it that way, I guess I can agree with it.
dallas75216 | Jan 18, 2013, 01:24 PM EST
what really sucks for him is there aint no way he will get out his homemade prison in eternity.
liammurf | Jan 18, 2013, 12:45 PM EST
He's a good man in my eyes, a "Dead Criminal". He sucked it up and tood his punishment
merefalow | Jan 18, 2013, 12:09 PM EST
apart from going out with out mewling kicking screaming and crying,which takes an amount of courage,he led a life of criminality,seemed to accept his fate and met it,he said he only killed fellow crims,so thats okay then?glad i wern,t in the same cell though.
handsome68 | Jan 18, 2013, 09:25 AM EST
Another fine example of "All the Irish or Irish-American news that fits, we print".