Read a June 29, 2013, story from The New York Times about Texas’ record of executed inmates’ last words. The state, with the highest number of executions in the U.S., keeps an online database of the executed’s last words.

Mark A. Costanzo is a psychology professor at Claremont McKenna College in Claremont, Calif. He is an expert on the death penalty, nonverbal communication, expert testimony and social psychology. He wrote Just Revenge: Costs and Consequences of the Death Penalty.

Defense lawyer Gregory J. Kuykendall specializes in capital cases and wrote about the politics of death sentencing in Arizona. He is also lead death penalty counsel to the Mexican Foreign Ministry.

John D. Carlson is associate professor of religious studies at Arizona State University. His books include, as co-editor, Religion and the Death Penalty: A Call for Reckoning. His work focuses on religion, ethics and politics.

John C. McAdams is a political scientist at Marquette University in Milwaukee whose research focuses on congressional politics, social class and elections and capital punishment. He has written that he favors capital punishment, even if it doesn’t work as a deterrent.

Joseph L. Hoffmann is Harry Pratter Professor of Law at Indiana University-Bloomington. He is an expert on the death penalty and federal criminal law.

Dudley Sharp of Houston is a death penalty activist who formerly opposed capital punishment but now supports it. He has been interviewed on major television and radio news and opinion programs and included in newspaper articles.

Jim Marcus is co-director of the University of Texas at Austin’s Capital Punishment Clinic. The clinic gives students the opportunity to help represent indigent criminal defendants in capital cases.

Ted A. Smith is associate professor of preaching and ethics at Emory University in Atlanta. Smith focuses on questions of ethics and justice, such as the death penalty, in a democratic society where the majority may support ethically problematic measures.