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LIVINGSTON, Texas – Condemned inmate Patrick Knight has been considering dozens of jokes he's been receiving in recent weeks since saying he wanted to tell a joke as part of his final statement from the Texas death chamber gurney this evening.

"Death is my punishment, I've accepted that," said Mr. Knight, 39, convicted of the fatal shooting of his neighbors almost 16 years ago outside Amarillo. "I'm not afraid of dying."

He said he decided to solicit jokes to help his buddies on death row deal with their stress.

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SAN FRANCISCO -- Three California politicians proposed a bill Monday to examine San Quentin State Prison's death row housing.Until the study is completed, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation would be prohibited from spending additional money on the proposed condemned inmate complex at San Quentin. The bill does not attempt to decommission San Quentin or to relocate death row, its authors said.San Quentin has 6,000 inmates, about 10 percent of whom are condemned. It houses...

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HUNTSVILLE, Texas ? The death row inmate who says he'll tell a joke Tuesday night with his final statement won't be the first to try out some humor before being executed.

Patrick Knight, set to die for killing an Amarillo-area couple nearly 16 years ago, has said he'll tell a joke when the warden at the Huntsville Unit of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice leans over him just after 6 p.m. Tuesday and asks for his statement.

Knight, 39, said he hatched his plan after a death row colleague, Vincent Gutierrez, was executed earlier this year and laughed from the gurney before his lethal injection: "Where's a stunt double when you need one?"

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A death row inmate with terminal cancer was down to his final appeal Monday, the day before his execution, after a judge dismissed his claim that the state's lethal injection method unconstitutionally causes excruciating pain.

Death penalty opponents who question the need to execute someone who has as little as six months to live anyway have rallied around Jimmy Dale Bland, a two-time killer who shot his 62-year-old employer in the back of the head 11 years ago.

"It won't take much to kill him. He's half dead now," said Bud Welch of Oklahoma City, a board member of the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty.

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Click photo to enlargeA law enforcement officer stands on the pedestrian bridge outside the University Orthopaedic Center in Research Park following a shooting that left a correctional officer dead. «1»After Monday's killing of a Corrections officer, Department of Corrections Tom Patterson canceled all non-emergency prison transports pending a review of department policies.

    Patterson said it did not appear any policy was violated during Curtis Michael Allgier's hospital visit.

    Only high-risk inmates required two officers during transport, and Allgier was not considered high-risk, Patterson said. In other hospital locations, one officer looks over multiple inmates who are put in a holding area, he said.

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