This is a list of people executed in Tennessee. Until 1913, there were no records of the numbers or names of the people who were executed.
Number | Name | Date of execution |
---|---|---|
1. | Julius Morgan | July 13, 1916 |
2. | J. D. Williams | July 8, 1918 |
3. | Eddie Alsup | July 8, 1918 |
4. | Frank Ewing | May 31, 1919 |
5. | Winfred Walker | January 8, 1920 |
6. | Lorenzo Young | September 3, 1920 |
7. | Cyre Mus Jackson | August 3, 1921 |
8. | Taylor Neal | August 3, 1921 |
9. | Hamp Gholston | August 17, 1921 |
10. | Chesley Graham | August 17, 1921 |
11. | Will Allen | August 17, 1921 |
12. | John Green | February 17, 1922 |
13. | Asbury Fields | February 18, 1922 |
14. | Tom Christmas | March 1, 1922 |
15. | Charles Petree | March 1, 1922 |
16. | John McClure | March 1, 1922 |
17. | Otto Stephens | March 1, 1922 |
18. | Maurice Mays | March 15, 1922 |
19. | Granville Bunch | April 11, 1922 |
20. | William Dwight | July 25, 1922 |
21. | Austin Harris | August 15, 1922 |
22. | Jim McElroy | August 15, 1922 |
23. | Bin Burchfield | January 14, 1925 |
24. | Robert Tate | November 5, 1925 |
25. | Charles Barr | August 20, 1926 |
26. | John F. Webb | May 20, 1927 |
27. | John H. Wallace | May 25, 1927 |
28. | Herman Coggins | November 10, 1927 |
29. | Ben Fowler | January 25, 1928 |
30. | Will Terrell | June 19, 1929 |
31. | "Henry" | August 22, 1929 |
33. | John Jones | February 14, 1930 |
33. | Carey Gune | March 14, 1930 |
34. | J.T. Harris | January 22, 1931 |
35. | John T. Shaw | July 3, 1931 |
36. | Oscar Bevins | September 7, 1933 |
37. | Andrew Wilcoxson | September 7, 1933 |
38. | Willie Jones | October 30, 1933 |
39. | Jim Allen | January 5, 1934 |
40. | Joe Emmory | February 5, 1934 |
41. | James Swann | February 5, 1934 |
42. | Louis Fain | February 5, 1934 |
43. | Percy Smith | April 4, 1934 |
44. | Frank Mays | April 4, 1934 |
45. | Jasper Graham | April 4, 1934 |
46. | James Pillow | September 1, 1934 |
47. | John Deal | September 1, 1934 |
48. | Bill Lee | January 2, 1936 |
49. | Walter Kennedy | January 2, 1936 |
50. | Louis Willis | January 2, 1936 |
51. | Ernest Womack | April 1, 1936 |
52. | E. K. Harris | May 22, 1936 |
53. | Curley Ballard | August 11, 1936 |
54. | James Smith | August 11, 1936 |
55. | James Clark | August 11, 1936 |
56. | Elmer Barrett | November 13, 1936 |
57. | James Turner | March 5, 1937 |
58. | James Taylor | March 15, 1937 |
59. | Anderson Berry | March 17, 1937 |
60. | Tom Franklin | March 18, 1937 |
61. | Gus McCoig | April 3, 1937 |
62. | Roy Wilburn Eatmon | April 16, 1937 |
63. | William Farmer | April 30, 1937 |
64. | Howard Dunn | April 30, 1937 |
65. | Jimmie L. Parrish | August 9, 1937 |
66. | Fred Ritchie | August 10, 1937 |
67. | Gus McKinney | April 15, 1938 |
68. | Arthur Mosby | July 25, 1938 |
69. | Miller Tollett | January 11, 1939 |
70. | Ernest Stanley | January 19, 1939 |
71. | Frank Murray | March 28, 1939 |
72. | Hyman Johnson | March 28, 1939 |
73. | Hubert Harris | April 4, 1939 |
74. | J.O. Martin | April 10, 1939 |
75. | Joe McKay | April 10, 1939 |
76. | Willie J. Smith | April 10, 1939 |
77. | Harley Evans | August 28, 1939 |
78. | Clyde Willis | January 10, 1940 |
79. | A.C. Mobley | March 15, 1940 |
80. | James Goodin | September 4, 1940 |
81 | William Henry | September 4, 1940 |
82. | Van Gilmore | April 18, 1941 |
83. | Walter Reed | July 18, 1941 |
84. | Willie L. Porter | July 24, 1941 |
85. | Carl Cole | July 24, 1941 |
86. | Lawrence West | July 30, 1941 |
87. | Roy Walden | February 13, 1942 |
88. | John Dockery | February 14, 1942 |
89. | Ernest Dixon | February 14, 1942 |
90. | Clarence May | March 20, 1942 |
91. | John H. Goods | March 20, 1942 |
94. | William Headen | March 30, 1943 |
92. | Robert Cannon | March 30, 1943 |
93. | James Tucker | July 15, 1943 |
94. | Marshall Spigner | July 15, 1943 |
95. | Robert Hall | December 15, 1943 |
96. | George Hambrick | December 15, 1943 |
97. | Billy Dixon | July 16, 1945 |
98. | Thomas Walker | March 1, 1946 |
99. | Johnnie Outlaw | March 1, 1946 |
100. | George Douglas | July 5, 1946 |
101. | John H. Luffman | August 30, 1946 |
102. | Alvin Hicks | August 30, 1946 |
103. | Albert Duboise | April 11, 1947 |
104. | John Hodge | June 19, 1947 |
105. | Fred Jackson | August 11, 1947 |
106. | James Sandusky | April 22, 1948 |
107. | John Kelley | April 22, 1948 |
108. | William C. Turner | August 31, 1948 |
109. | James M. Scribner | August 31, 1948 |
110. | Tommy H. Taylor | August 31, 1948 |
114. | Barney Thompson | February 17, 1949 |
111. | Edward Watson | June 10, 1949 |
112. | Paul Lacey | November 25, 1949 |
113. | Clyde Steel | January 24, 1950 |
114. | Samuel L. Voss | April 15, 1955 |
115. | Harry Kirkendall | August 1, 1955 |
116. | Charlie Sullins | August 1, 1955 |
117. | Robert Crenshaw | September 15, 1955 |
118. | Robert Allen | March 15, 1957 |
119. | Billy T. Gibbs | May 6, 1957 |
120. | Thomas Rutledge | June 15, 1959 |
121. | William Tines | November 7, 1960 |
No. | Name | Race | Age | Sex | Date of execution | Method | Victim(s) | Governor |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | Robert Glen Coe | White | 44 | M | April 19, 2000 | Lethal injection | Cary Ann Medlin | Don Sundquist |
2 | Sedley Alley | White | 50 | M | June 28, 2006 | U. S. Marine Corps Lance Corporal Suzanne Marie Collins | Phil Bredesen | |
3 | Philip Ray Workman | White | 53 | M | May 9, 2007 | Memphis Police Lieutenant Ronald Oliver | ||
4 | Daryl Keith Holton | White | 45 | M | September 12, 2007 | Electrocution | Stephen Holton, Brent Holton, Eric Holton, and Kayla Holton | |
5 | Steve Henley | White | 55 | M | February 4, 2009 | Lethal injection | Fred Stafford and Edna Stafford | |
6 | Cecil C. Johnson Jr. | Black | 53 | M | December 2, 2009 | Bobby Bell Jr., James Moore, and Charles House | ||
7 | William Ray "Billy" Irick | White | 59 | M | August 9, 2018 | Paula Kay Dyer | Bill Haslam | |
8 | Edmund George Zagorski | White | 63 | M | November 1, 2018 | Electrocution | John Dale Dotson and James Wayne Porter | |
9 | David Earl Miller | White | 61 | M | December 6, 2018 | Lee Standifer | ||
10 | Donnie Edward Johnson | White | 68 | M | May 16, 2019 | Lethal injection | Connie Johnson | Bill Lee |
11 | Stephen Michael West | White | 56 | M | August 15, 2019 | Electrocution | Wanda Romines and Sheila Romines | |
12 | Leroy Hall Jr. | White | 53 | M | December 5, 2019 | Traci Crozier | ||
13 | Nicholas Todd Sutton | White | 58 | M | February 20, 2020 | Carl Estep |
Capital punishment, also known as the death penalty and formerly called judicial homicide, is the state-sanctioned practice of deliberately killing a person as a punishment for an actual or supposed crime, usually following an authorized, rule-governed process to conclude that the person is responsible for violating norms that warrant said punishment. The sentence ordering that an offender be punished in such a manner is known as a death sentence, and the act of carrying out the sentence is known as an execution. A prisoner who has been sentenced to death and awaits execution is condemned and is commonly referred to as being "on death row".
A guillotine is an apparatus designed for efficiently carrying out executions by beheading. The device consists of a tall, upright frame with a weighted and angled blade suspended at the top. The condemned person is secured with a pillory at the bottom of the frame, holding the position of the neck directly below the blade. The blade is then released, swiftly and forcefully decapitating the victim with a single, clean pass; the head falls into a basket or other receptacle below.
An electric chair is a device used to execute an individual by electrocution. When used, the condemned person is strapped to a specially built wooden chair and electrocuted through electrodes fastened on the head and leg. This execution method, conceived in 1881 by a Buffalo, New York dentist named Alfred P. Southwick, was developed throughout the 1880s as a supposed humane alternative to hanging, and first used in 1890. The electric chair has been used in the United States and, for several decades, in the Philippines. While death was originally theorized to result from damage to the brain, it was shown in 1899 that it primarily results from ventricular fibrillation and eventual cardiac arrest.
Execution by firing squad, in the past sometimes called fusillading, is a method of capital punishment, particularly common in the military and in times of war. Some reasons for its use are that firearms are usually readily available and a gunshot to a vital organ, such as the brain or heart, most often will kill relatively quickly.
In the United States, capital punishment is a legal penalty throughout the country at the federal level, in 27 states, and in American Samoa. It is also a legal penalty for some military offenses. Capital punishment has been abolished in 23 states and in the federal capital, Washington, D.C. Capital punishment is, in practice, only applied for aggravated murder. Although it is a legal penalty in 27 states, only 20 states have the ability to execute death sentences, with the other seven, as well as the federal government, being subject to different types of moratoriums. The existence of capital punishment in the United States can be traced to early colonial Virginia. Along with Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore, the United States is one of five advanced democracies and the only Western nation that applies the death penalty regularly. It is one of 54 countries worldwide applying it, and was the first to develop lethal injection as a method of execution, which has since been adopted by five other countries. The Philippines has since abolished executions, and Guatemala has done so for civil offenses, leaving the United States as one of four countries to still use this method. It is common practice for the condemned to be administered sedatives prior to execution, regardless of the method used.
Capital punishment in China is a legal penalty. It is commonly applied for murder and drug trafficking, although it is also a legal penalty for various other offenses. Executions are carried out by lethal injection or by shooting. In a survey conducted by the New York Times in 2014, it was found the death penalty retained widespread support in Chinese society.
The use of capital punishment by the United States military is a legal penalty in martial criminal justice. Despite its legality, capital punishment has not been imposed by the U.S. military in over sixty years.
Capital punishment in Iceland was practiced until 1830. Although many were sentenced to death after 1830, their sentences were each commuted. Capital punishment was formally abolished in 1928.
Capital punishment in Germany has been abolished for all crimes, and is now explicitly prohibited by constitution. It was abolished in West Germany in 1949, in the Saarland in 1956, and East Germany in 1987. The last person executed in Germany was the East German Werner Teske, who was executed at Leipzig Prison in 1981.
Execution by shooting is a method of capital punishment in which a person is shot to death by one or more firearms. It is the most common method of execution worldwide, used in about 70 countries, with execution by firing squad being one particular form.
Daryl Keith Holton was an American Gulf War veteran and convicted child murderer who was executed by electrocution by the state of Tennessee on September 12, 2007, in Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville.
Death row, also known as condemned row, is a place in a prison that houses inmates awaiting execution after being convicted of a capital crime and sentenced to death. The term is also used figuratively to describe the state of awaiting execution, even in places where no special facility or separate unit for condemned inmates exists. In the United States, after an individual is found guilty of a capital offense in states where execution is a legal penalty, the judge will give the jury the option of imposing a death sentence or life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. It is then up to the jury to decide whether to give the death sentence; this usually has to be a unanimous decision. If the jury agrees on death, the defendant will remain on death row during appeal and habeas corpus procedures, which may continue for several decades.
Capital punishment in Norway has been constitutionally prohibited since 2014.
The debate over capital punishment in the United States existed as early as the colonial period. As of April 2022, it remains a legal penalty within 27 states, the federal government, and military criminal justice systems. The states of Colorado, Delaware, Illinois, Maryland, New Hampshire, Virginia, and Washington abolished the death penalty within the last decade alone.
Capital punishment was outlawed in New York after the New York Court of Appeals, the highest court in the state, declared the practice as unconstitutional under the state's constitution in 2004.
Robert Charles Gleason Jr. was an American serial killer who was sentenced to death and executed in Virginia for two separate murders of two of his cellmates. Gleason, who was already serving a life sentence for another murder, was an execution volunteer who vowed to continue killing in prison if he was not put to death. Capital punishment was abolished in Virginia on March 24, 2021, officially making Gleason the last person to be executed in Virginia by electrocution.
Capital punishment is no longer a legal punishment in Rwanda. The death penalty was abolished in Rwanda in 2007.