Last-Minute Reprieve: Difference between revisions
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{{trope}}
The gallows is replaced with an electric chair in modern settings, and the messenger on horseback with a telephone call from the mayor or governor.
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== [[Film]] ==
* The narrator of [[Stephen King]]'s ''[[The Green Mile]]'' reminds us frequently that this almost never
* In the movie ''Almost Heroes'', we are introduced to Bartholomew Hunt as he is about to be executed then pardoned in this manner.
* The film ''[[Serenity]]'' has the lead characters facing down Alliance troops, waiting for orders to shoot them down. {{spoiler|The antagonist, "The Operative", tells them to hold their fire when he sees security footage of the scientists who created the Reavers}}.
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* In ''[[Blackadder]]'', a message gives Blackadder reprieve from death by firing squad, with a bit of a subversion... The message is from the firing squad and contains a last greeting to him. [[Double Subversion|He's then saved by the trope played straight, but offscreen]].
** This example may be the latest possible reprieve, given that the firing squad corporal gets as far as "Ready, aim, f-".
* Subverted in ''[[The West Wing]]'', which looks at the issue from the point of view of the man granting the reprieve; after wrestling with the issue of whether to grant a Death Row triple-murderer a stay of execution for a weekend, and initially deciding not to, Bartlet eventually realises that he
* In the live action ''[[The Flash (TV series)|The Flash]]'' series, it was a genuine race against time to clear an innocent man before he was electrocuted in an hour. In the end, the Flash actually outruns the governor's telephone call and unties and pulls the man out of the chair before the volts zap him.
* Parodied in a ''[[Rutland Weekend Television]]'' sketch. Just before the condemned man is about to be executed a telegram arrives which reads "The execution is candelled" (sic). The prisoner insists that this must be a typo for "cancelled", but his jailors argue that it might mean the Governor wants the execution carried out by candlelight.
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== Music ==
* In the song "Joe Bean", made famous by [[Johnny Cash]], Joe Bean is convicted of a murder he didn't commit (though it's noted there are plenty of others he did). His mother goes to the governor to plead for clemency, mentioning that the date of the execution is Joe's birthday. At the last minute, the prison receives a message from the
== [[Real Life]] ==
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== Theater ==
* The ending of ''The Threepenny Opera''. The finale goes on to note that the King's mounted messengers don't come very often. In fact, the finale is pretty much a savage parody of the whole trope because the main character has not only [[Villain Protagonist|thoroughly deserved a hanging]], but the ending is lampshaded as an "obligatory happy ending" to the n-th
== [[Video Games]] ==
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