In the book Hunter adds a note explaining the origin of the song:

The general direction of this lyric was conceived on the occasion of the first California execution in decades, under Governor Wilson, which happened in 1992 at San Quentin. I'd been canoeing every day on the Richmond Bay, right outside the prison, during the days leading up to the outrage, and the mounting tension around the Victorian fortress was darkly palpable. The original notion of the lyric was thought up earlier, in response to a query from Oliver Stone about the Grateful Dead doing music for the end credits of JFK, the filming of which had just been completed. The deadline was too imminent, so it went by the boards. This version is somehwat of a palimpsest: bits of the originating theme can be detected here and there.