Alex Brinkley (Execution of)

Alex Brinkley was hanged at Morrilton (Conway County) on October 14, 1898, for the murder of a doctor. He went to his death denying having committed the murder, and seven years later, another man made a deathbed confession that he had actually done the deed.

On June 16, 1897, Dr. G. C. Chamness was sleeping on the front porch of his Center Ridge (Conway County) home when a “cowardly villain” crept up at 11:00 p.m. and shot him in the head. The bullet “went in at the top and right side of the head and ranged downward, making a ghastly wound from which the brains oozed out.”

Noting that “the circumstances of the killing were most atrocious,” the Arkansas Democrat wrote that “circumstances pointed to Alex Brinkley and others as guilty.” Evidence in a two-day trial in March 1898 indicated that Brinkley, a neighbor of Chamness, had planned a trip to Van Buren County on the day of the murder, but he testified that a friend told him that “the white caps up there had threatened me and I had better turn back.”

Noting that a drunken Brinkley had reportedly threatened Chamness the day before the doctor’s death, prosecutors theorized that Brinkley, who was sleeping on a friend’s porch on June 16, had slipped away when everyone else in the house had fallen asleep, taken a gun, shot the doctor, then returned to the porch and gone back to sleep. Though Brinkley testified that “I and Dr. Chamness were, and always had been friends,” he was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to hang on July 1, 1898. The Democrat wrote that “the conviction was secured upon evidence almost wholly circumstantial. The time of the killing was fixed by the witness with a degree of certainty rarely occurring in cases of this kind, since there were no eye witnesses.”

The execution was delayed while the sentence was appealed to the Arkansas Supreme Court, which affirmed it. Brinkley’s case was then sent to Governor Daniel W. Jones in hopes of a commutation, but Jones declined to approve it, writing that “he may possibly not have fired the shot, but he knew by whom it was fired.” He set October 14, 1898, for Brinkley’s execution.

In interviews by an Arkansas Gazette reporter on the morning of the execution, Brinkley admitted that “I have not spent my life on earth as I had ought to,” but said he had tried to make peace with God and hoped to go to heaven, adding “in regard to the crime for which I suffer, I did not kill Dr. Chamness. I did not have anything to do with it.”

Crowds of people from around Conway County had begun to gather at Morrilton at 7:00 a.m. on October 14, and “by 11 o’clock the court house yard and streets adjoining were packed with people anxious to hear Brinkley’s last talk.” Two Methodist preachers held services for him in the jail at 10:00 a.m., “in which the condemned joined fervently.”

At 10:40 a.m., Brinkley “started for the scaffold, the steps of which he ascended without assistance.” He spoke to the crowd for about twenty minutes, “reiterating his innocence and hope for salvation.” The trap door opened at 11:30, and “death was instantaneous, the neck being broken by the fall, which was eight feet.” After fourteen minutes, his body was cut down and turned over to friends for burial.

Brinkley was buried at Grandview Cemetery in Grandview (Conway County), his gravestone proclaiming: “Innocently hanged.” In April 1905, it was widely reported that a man named Marquis Meadam, who was dying in Springfield (Conway County), confessed that he had murdered Chamness.

The Democrat reported in 1898 that “Brinkley was the first white man ever hanged in the county,” but white murderer William B. Thompson had been executed in 1875 in Lewisburg (Conway County).

For additional information:
“Alexander Brinkley.” Find a Grave. https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/6167109/alexander-brinkley (accessed June 6, 2024).

“Brinkley Hanged.” Arkansas Democrat, October 14, 1898, p. 1.

“Brinkley Must Hang.” Arkansas Democrat, October 13, 1898, p. 1.

“Foully Murdered.” Arkansas Gazette, June 18, 1897, p. 1.

“His Day of Doom.” Arkansas Democrat, September 8, 1898, p. 8.

“In First Degree.” Arkansas Democrat, March 16, 1898, p. 8.

“In His Last Hours.” Arkansas Gazette, October 15, 1898, p. 1.

“Innocent Man Hanged.” Fitchburg [Massachusetts] Sentinel, April 12, 1905, p. 7.

“The Killers of Men.” Arkansas Democrat, July 2, 1898, p. 8.

Mark K. Christ
Central Arkansas Library System