From a letter sent in January to the Gaston Gazette, a North Carolina newspaper, by Danny Hembree, a fifty-year-old death-row inmate at Raleigh’s Central Prison. Hembree was found guilty last year of murdering a seventeen-year-old girl in 2009 and has been accused of murdering two other women.

My name is Danny Hembree. I was tried in Gaston County by twelve of its fine citizens. I was found guilty of first-degree capital murder and was sentenced to death on November 18, 2011. The North Carolina Department of Corrections was ordered to carry out my murder.

I wonder if the public…