Cuthbert is a city in and the county seat of Randolph County, Georgia, United States. The population was 3,520 in 2019.
Old Sparky is the nickname of the electric chairs in Arkansas, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, Nebraska, New York, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas, Virginia, and West Virginia. Old Smokey is the nickname of the electric chairs used in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Tennessee. "Old Sparky" is sometimes used to refer to electric chairs in general, and not one of a specific state.
Tichina Rolanda Arnold is an American actress. She began her career as a child actor, appearing in supporting roles in Little Shop of Horrors (1986) and How I Got into College (1989) before being cast as Pamela "Pam" James on the Fox sitcom Martin, whom she portrayed from 1992 until the show ended in 1997. Arnold also portrayed the family matriarch Rochelle on the UPN/CW sitcom Everybody Hates Chris from 2005 to 2009, and reprised the role in the animated revival Everybody Still Hates Chris (2024-). She portrayed Judi Mann in the TV Land original sitcom Happily Divorced from 2011 to 2013, and from 2014 to 2017, she acted the lead role of Cassie Calloway on Survivor's Remorse. As of 2018, Arnold portrays Tina Butler in the CBS sitcom series The Neighborhood. From 2018 to 2019, she acted the role of Paulette in the South African series Lockdown.
Lena Baker was an African American maid in Cuthbert, Georgia, United States, who was convicted of capital murder of a white man, Ernest Knight. She was executed by the state of Georgia in 1945. Baker was the only woman in Georgia to be executed by electrocution.
Just Cause is a 1995 American crime thriller film directed by Arne Glimcher and starring Sean Connery and Laurence Fishburne. It is based on John Katzenbach's novel of the same name.
Georgia State Prison was the main maximum-security facility in the US state of Georgia for the Georgia Department of Corrections. It was located in unincorporated Tattnall County. First opened in 1938, the prison housed some of the most dangerous inmates in the state's history, and it was the site of Georgia's death row until 1980.
Wrongful execution is a miscarriage of justice occurring when an innocent person is put to death by capital punishment. Opponents of capital punishment often cite cases of wrongful execution as arguments, while proponents argue that innocence concerns the credibility of the justice system as a whole and does not solely undermine the use of the death penalty.
George Junius Stinney Jr. was an African American boy who, at the age of 14, was convicted and then executed in a proceeding later vacated as an unfair trial for the murders of two young white girls in March 1944 – Betty June Binnicker, age 11, and Mary Emma Thames, age 8 – in his hometown of Alcolu, South Carolina. He was convicted, sentenced to death, and executed by electric chair in June 1944, thus becoming the youngest American with an exact birth date confirmed to be both sentenced to death and executed in the 20th century.
This is a list of notable overturned convictions in the United States.
John Eldon Smith was convicted of the murders of Ronald and Juanita Akins. He was executed by the state of Georgia via electric chair at the age of 53. He became the first person to be executed in Georgia since 1976 when the death penalty was reinstated.
Ralph Wilcox is an American actor and director who has appeared in many movies and guest roles on television series during his career in Hollywood, dating to the early 1970s. Some of his most memorable roles include "Jammin' Jim" Jenkins on the Emerald Cove segments of The Mickey Mouse Club, Mason Freeman in seaQuest 2032, and Mugambi in Tarzan: The Epic Adventures. He played the role of Uncle Henry in the original Broadway production of The Wiz.
Opened in 1969, Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison (GDCP) is a Georgia Department of Corrections prison for men in unincorporated Butts County, Georgia, near Jackson. The prison holds the state execution chamber. The execution equipment was moved to the prison in June 1980, with the first execution in the facility occurring on December 15, 1983. The prison houses the male death row, while female death row inmates reside in Arrendale State Prison.
Toni Jo Henry was the only woman ever to be executed in Louisiana's electric chair. Married to Claude 'Cowboy' Henry, she decided to break her husband out of jail where he was serving a fifty-year sentence in the Texas State Penitentiary for murder. Together with Harold Burks, she took a ride with Joseph P. Calloway, whom they then robbed and murdered. Toni Jo Henry was convicted and sentenced to death. After three trials, she was executed by electrocution on November 28, 1942. Her case generated several popular books and films including A Savage Wisdom and Stone Justice.
William Henry Hance was an American serial killer and soldier who is believed to have murdered four women and molested three in and around military bases before his arrest in 1978. He was convicted of murdering three of them, and not brought to trial on the fourth. He was executed by the state of Georgia in the electric chair.
Donald Edward DeMag was the last person executed by the U.S. state of Vermont.
The Martinsville Seven were a group of seven African-American men from Martinsville, Virginia, who were all executed in 1951 by the state of Virginia after being convicted of raping a white woman. At the time of their arrest, all but one were between the ages of 18 and 23. They were quickly tried in six separate trials, and each was convicted and sentenced to death. It was the largest mass execution for rape that had been reported in the United States. On August 31, 2021, the Governor of Virginia pardoned the convictions of all seven men, 70 years after their deaths.
Mary Prince is an African American woman wrongly convicted of murder who then became the nanny for Amy Carter, the daughter of US President Jimmy Carter and his wife Rosalynn Carter, and was eventually granted a full pardon.
Kelly Renée Gissendaner was an American woman who was executed by the U.S. state of Georgia. Gissendaner had been convicted of orchestrating the murder of her husband, Douglas Gissendaner. At the time of the murder, Gissendaner was 28, and her husband was 30. After her conviction, and until her execution, Gissendaner was the only woman on death row in Georgia.
Buddy Earl Justus was an American spree killer who raped and murdered three women, including a pregnant woman, across Georgia, Florida, and Virginia in October 1978. Convicted of all three murders and receiving deaths sentences in all three states, Justus was executed in Virginia in 1990.
