DEATH WARRANT
Jose Miguel Xavier Gonzales, in a few months it will be spring, the snow of winter will flee away, the ice will vanish, and the air will become soft and balmy. In short, Jose Miguel Xavier Gonzales, the annual miracle of the year's awakening will come to pass, but you won't be here. The rivulet will run its purling course to the sea, the timid desert flowers will put forth their tender shoots, the glorious valleys of this imperial domain will blossom as the rose, still you won't be here. From every treetop some wildwood songster will carol his mating song, butterflies will sport in the sunshine, the busy bee will hum happily as it pursues its accustomed vocation, the gentle breezes will tease the tassels of the wild grasses, and all nature, Jose Miguel Xavier Gonzales, will be glad, but you won't be here to enjoy it; for I command the sheriff or some other officer or officers of this county to lead you out to some remote spot, swing you up by the neck to the nodding bough of some sturdy oak, and there let you hang till you are dead, dead, dead. An then, Jose Miguel Xavier Gonzales, I command further that such officer or officers retire quietly from your swinging, dangling corpse, that the vultures may descend from the heavens upon your filthy body and pick the putrid flesh therefrom till nothing remain but the bare bleached bones of a cold-blooded, copper-colored, blood-thirsty, chili-eating, guilty, sheep-herding son-of-a-bitch.
Isaac Parker
District Judge