A convicted killer's last words

Multiple murderer Michael Sharp is gone, but his plea for forgiveness and his words of judgment against his executioners still live on the Web.

Sharp, convicted of raping and stabbing to death a woman and her 8-year-old daughter after he kidnapped them from a Texas carwash in 1982, wrote of his new-found religion in a three-page statement posted online shortly before he was executed late Wednesday by lethal injection.

"I became a new creature in Christ and turned away from my sins, and now I have tasted the sweet going away," the 43-year-old Sharp wrote. He also begged for "forgiveness from those I have sinned against" -- including the lone survivor of the attack, the woman's then-14-year-old daughter, whom he also raped.

But he decried the death penalty as equally as wrong as his earlier acts, saying to supporters of his execution, "Yes, I was once a reflection of you -- blind, wicked, and a taker of life."

Officials at the Huntsville, Texas, prison where Sharp was put to death said they believe his was the first-ever Web posting of a death-row inmate's last words. Normally, only those witnessing the execution can hear the prisoner's final statement.

Sharp's statement was posted by the Lamp of Hope Project, a Texas-based nonprofit prisoners' rights watchdog group that he helped found. (The group's Web site includes background information and includes Sharp's involvement with it.)

But this was not the first time a death-row inmate has used the Web to get his message across.

Supporters of Girvies Davis -- convicted in the 1978 shooting death of an 89-year-old, wheelchair-bound Illinois man -- launched an aggressive online campaign for Davis' freedom in 1995, the earliest days of the medium.

Davis, who was mentally ill, confessed to the murder, but anti-death-penalty activists argued the confession was not valid. There was no hard evidence linking him to the crime scene.

A Web site devoted to Davis' cause might have been read by hundreds of thousands, or even millions, of people during its several months in existence, but the bid for his release was not successful. Davis was executed on May 17, 1995, and the Web site is no longer in existence.

Supporters of Mumia Abu-Jamal, convicted of the 1981 killing of a Philadelphia police officer, maintain an active Web presence.

The case even has its own category on the Yahoo search engine site.

One such group, the International Concerned Family and Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal, is using the Web to get the word out about a rally planned for Dec. 6 in Philadelphia to protest Abu-Jamal's continuing incarceration. Abu-Jamal and his supporters say he never made the confession that led to his conviction.