Entries - Entry Category: Law Enforcement

Peters, Albert (Execution of)

Albert Peters was a young African American man hanged on December 30, 1887, at Marianna (Lee County) for murdering the husband of his “paramour.” Albert Peters was born into slavery at the Dr. G. B. Peters Plantation near Council Bend in Lee County on October 10, 1860. His family moved to Memphis, Tennessee, after the Civil War, and then to Phillips County, where he attended Southland College. Peters was later described as “very black, medium hight [sic] and weight, clean shaven face and had a tolerable fair education, being able to read very well and write a respectable hand.” By 1885, he was once again living on the Peters plantation but, early that year, went to Phillips County, “where he …

Pettus, Phillip (Execution of)

Phillip Pettus was an African American man hanged on August 24, 1894, in Helena (Phillips County) after being convicted of first-degree murder for killing his wife. Phillip Pettus may be the same man listed in the 1880 census as H. P. Pettice, age twenty-eight, a “mulatto” farmer who lived in Phillips County’s Cypress township with his wife, Emma, age twenty-three, and their two sons. By 1893, Pettus reportedly “mistreated his wife” to the point that she left him and went to work at another plantation near Hyde Park (Phillips County). Pettus repeatedly begged her to return to him, but she refused. Pettus told her that “she had better say prayers[,] for if she refused to live with him she would …

Phillips County Penal Farm Historic District

The Phillips County Penal Farm Historic District, located on Phillips County Road 353 south of U.S. 49 near Poplar Grove, contains a main jail building constructed of concrete with a large concrete block section at the rear, two additional concrete block jail buildings, and a cast-concrete water tower. The complex is no longer in use and is heavily overgrown, but it still reflects its original use as a county prison farm. According to Goodspeed’s Biographical and Historical Memoirs of Eastern Arkansas, a sturdy jail was a local priority from the earliest days of Phillips County. The first structure built for county use was a two-story log building that housed a courtroom above and a jail below, which were soon replaced …

Pippin, Essex (Execution of)

Essex Pippin (sometimes listed as Pipkin), a nineteen-year-old African American man, was hanged at Vanndale (Cross County) on October 11, 1901, after being convicted of raping two women. On July 29, 1901, a man reportedly raped a Black woman named Leah Wooden and then attacked Mrs. Allen Taylor, described in contemporaneous newspaper accounts as “a respectable white woman, who is the wife of a prominent farmer living near Wynne” in Cross County. Essex Pippin, who lived about a quarter mile from Vanndale, was soon arrested and rushed to the state penitentiary in Little Rock (Pulaski County) by local lawmen to protect him from “lynching at the hands of a rapidly forming excited populace,” providing “a narrow escape from death by …

Poe, Harry (Trial and Execution of)

Harry Poe was the first person legally executed in Garland County, Arkansas. On January 18, 1910, Harry Poe, an African American teenager, allegedly raped Lena Adams, a younger white girl. A Garland County court convicted Poe of rape on March 1, 1910, and sentenced him to death. Several residents of the county believed that Poe was innocent and attempted to save his life. On September 2, 1910, Harry Poe was executed. The details of Poe’s life before the alleged rape are unclear. Available newspapers variously listed his age as seventeen, eighteen, or nineteen, and provided no details about his life before the incident. Census records do not provide any likely matches for Harry Poe. A writer for the Arkansas Democrat described him in overtly racist language as “a thick-lipped, low-browed, bestial type of negro.” On January …

Pointer, John (Execution of)

On April 3, 1874, a young Native American man named John Pointer was executed in Fort Smith (Sebastian County) for allegedly murdering a white man named Blue in Choctaw Territory in 1872. Although there was some doubt as to how thorough authorities were in pursuing defense witnesses, Pointer was eventually executed for the crime. According to historian Jerry Akins, Pointer was an eighteen-year-old Seminole man “of middle size and good countenance.” According to Pointer’s story, he and his brother and Sam McGee were near the Canadian River in the Choctaw Nation when McGee declared that he intended to kill someone. When they met a drover named Blue, McGee said he would kill him, and the Pointer brothers tried to dissuade …

Prison Reform

The poor condition of Arkansas prisons has long been a subject of controversy in the state. The national prison system as a whole, and particularly in the South, was substandard up to the 1960s. Repeated scandal, evidence of extensive violence and rape, and violation of human rights brought national attention to Arkansas, placing pressure on the state to reform its penal system. Through a series of reforms beginning in 1967, the Arkansas prison system greatly improved, although issues of overcrowding still plague the state today. Calls for prison reform began in the late nineteenth century, especially with regard to the system of convict leasing, whereby prisoners were rented out to labor for private enterprises, often in horrible conditions. Governor George …

Pulaski County Penal Farm

From 1918 to 1974, the Pulaski County government operated a prison facility—commonly known as the County Farm—on a 640-acre farm located west of Little Rock (Pulaski County) at the confluence of the Arkansas River and the Little Maumelle River. After the facility was closed in 1974 as a result of an order by a federal judge, the site later became Two Rivers Park, which is accessed from State Highway 10 on County Farm Road. The County Farm was preceded by a series of “convict camps” and “convict farms.” In the early twentieth century, the prisoners were used for labor for county roads and bridges and were contracted out to private concerns for farm labor and land clearing. These early facilities were …

Quadruple Execution of 1923

Four inmates were executed on February 2, 1923, at the Arkansas State Penitentiary. This event marked the largest number of executions carried out by the state in a single day up to that point. Three were convicted of a murder committed in Ashley County, while the fourth was executed for two murders committed in Stone County. Ira Culp, a farmer near Wilmot (Ashley County), was murdered on the night of May 11, 1922. On the night of the murder, a group of horseback men from Bonita, Morehouse Parish, Louisiana, approached the Culp home. (Bonita is approximately seven miles south of the Arkansas state line.) While the motive for the crime is unclear, it is apparent that the men knew Culp, …

Quadruple Execution of 1926

Four Black men from Ouachita County were executed on February 12, 1926, for the 1925 murder of a filling station owner despite disavowing their confessions on the eve of being put to death. James M. Moore, age sixty-five, operated a gas station and store at McMahon’s Chapel near his home in Frenchport (Ouachita County), south of Camden (Ouachita County). On the evening of July 13, 1925, his daughters Trixie and Grace Moore drove to the station to give him a ride home. As they drove away from the store, they were attacked by bandits. The initial article in the Arkansas Gazette reported that they had just left “when a masked bandit stepped into the highway…and demanded that those in the …

Rector, Elias

Elias Rector was appointed U.S. marshal for the Territory of Arkansas later served as superintendent of Indian Affairs. During the Civil War, he sought to make treaties with Native American tribes on behalf of the Confederacy. Rector was the subject of the poem “The Fine Arkansas Gentleman, Close to the Choctaw Line,” written by his friend Albert Pike. Elias Rector was born on September 28, 1802, in Fauquier County, Virginia. He was the youngest of nine sons born to Wharton Rector and Mary Vance Rector, who was a native of North Carolina. Soon after his birth, the family moved to Illinois, where Elias Rector spent the early part of his youth. The family relocated again, this time to St. Louis, …

Reeves, Bass

Arkansas native Bass Reeves was one of the first Black lawmen west of the Mississippi River. As one of the most respected lawmen working in Indian Territory, he achieved legendary status for the number of criminals he captured. Bass Reeves was born enslaved in Crawford County in July 1838. His owners, the William S. Reeves family, moved to Grayson County, Texas, in 1846. During the Civil War, Bass became a fugitive slave and found refuge in Indian Territory (modern-day Oklahoma) amongst the Creek and Seminole Indians. Reeves is believed to have served with the irregular or regular Union Indians that fought in Indian Territory during the Civil War. After the Civil War, Reeves settled in Van Buren (Crawford County) with …

Reeves, Willis (Execution of)

Willis Reeves was hanged on July 15, 1881, in Van Buren (Crawford County) in a botched but ultimately successful execution for the slaying of an African American youth the previous year. Willis Reeves, who a newspaper wrote was “chunky, muscular, dark-brown and had a malignant countenance,” became involved “in a dispute” with a Black youth named John Drake in Van Buren on June 6, 1880. Reeves ending up pulling a pistol and shooting Drake in the head, killing him. Though no accounts appear to chronicle Reeves’s trial for murder, he was found guilty and sentenced to hang on July 15, 1881. Reeves would later try to escape in hopes of being shot and said he “bet a thousand dollars he …

Rose, Henry (Execution of)

Henry Rose was an African American man hanged at Osceola (Mississippi County) on April 4, 1884, for the shotgun slaying of Dempsey Taylor, a wealthy farmer. The 1880 census shows fifty-year-old Dempsey Taylor, who was listed as “mulatto,” living in Mississippi County’s Monroe Township with his wife Melinda and five children. Henry Rose, a seventeen-year-old Black laborer, lived in the same township with his grandparents, as did John Morrow, age twenty-five, a white farmer who lived with his wife and brother. A Tennessee newspaper described Taylor as “popular with his race, but…regarded as [an] impudent and overbearing person by his white neighbors.” On December 4, 1883, the Arkansas Gazette reported, Rose and Morrow argued with Taylor and “had trouble with …

Rose, Robert (Execution of)

Robert Rose died in the electric chair at Tucker Prison Farm on February 23, 1935, a mere fifty-one days following the murder of an Independence County sheriff’s deputy. Robert Rose, age twenty-seven, was born in the Arkansas Ozarks and had attended grammar school at Pine Bluff (Jefferson County) but later moved to Louisiana, where he stole a car in 1930 and was sentenced to five to eight years in prison. Despite two escapes from prison, he was paroled in 1934 and was back at his mother’s Pine Bluff home by Christmas. He soon embarked on a series of burglaries and robberies. On January 2, 1935, Rose and Woodrow Crump went to a gas station in Rosie (Independence County) and ordered …

Ruled by the Whip

Ruled by the Whip: Hell behind Bars in America’s Devil’s Island, the Arkansas Penitentiary is a 1958 self-published autobiographical account written by Dale Woodcock. One of the few printed accounts by an Arkansas prisoner, the book chronicles Woodcock’s experiences at Cummins prison farm in the 1950s. While the book garnered little attention when it was written, its tales of violence, corruption, and brutality corroborated abuses documented later during the governorship of Winthrop Rockefeller, who began work to reform the prisons. The author was born Charles Dale Woodcock on March 21, 1925, in Rogers (Benton County). He was the son of Henry Lee Woodcock (1900–1928) and Lillie Dell “Honey” Townsend Woodcock (1907–1988), both of whom were Arkansas natives. After the death …

Sarber, John Newton

John Newton Sarber was a Union soldier who remained in Arkansas after the Civil War and served in the state Senate, where he introduced a number of influential bills, including those creating the public school system and what is now the University of Arkansas (UA) in Fayetteville (Washington County). He also served as U.S. marshal of the U.S. Western District Court at Fort Smith (Sebastian County). Logan County was originally named Sarber County in his honor. John Newton Sarber was born on October 28, 1837, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to Stephen and Lucille Sarber; he had one brother and two sisters. His mother died giving birth in 1849. The abolitionist family moved to Kansas Territory in 1855. Sarber and his father …

Schumann, Clarence (Trial and Execution of)

Clarence Schumann was the second of only two people legally executed in Garland County (Harry Poe, an African–American teenager, was the first). On July 11, 1912, Schumann, a white man, murdered his wife after she refused to grant him a divorce. At trial, Schumann’s lawyers argued that his addiction to morphine rendered him insane and that he should be spared the death penalty. On October 29, 1912, however, a Garland County jury found Schumann guilty and sentenced him to death. He was executed on June 2, 1913.   On July 11, 1912, Clarence Schumann came home from work to find his wife, Lula, gathering clothes in the backyard. He shot her twice with his pistol, killing her. Garland County authorities arrested him that evening. When questioned, Schumann explained that he was angry that his wife would not grant him …

Scott, George Washington

George Washington Scott was Arkansas Territory’s first U.S. marshal, serving from 1820 to 1831, as well as the state’s first auditor and the first clerk of the Territorial General Assembly. However, his volatile personality negated many of his early accomplishments, and he died a violent death in almost total obscurity. George Washington Scott was born in June 1798 in Virginia. He was one of six children of Andrew and Elizabeth Scott; his older brother, Andrew Horatio Scott, was later appointed as one of the first judges of the Arkansas Territory Superior Court. The family was living near St. Louis in the new Louisiana Territory as early as 1805. In 1808, they moved to Ste. Genevieve, Missouri. By 1815, they were …

Scott, Ralph Downing, Sr.

Ralph Downing Scott Sr. had a long career in law enforcement and served as director of the Arkansas State Police during most of Governor Winthrop Rockefeller’s administration. In this capacity, Scott enacted many reforms to the Arkansas State Police that improved the professionalism of the department. Ralph Scott was born in McCaskill (Hempstead County) on February 2, 1914, to Burton L. Scott and Grace Bonner Scott. He was the oldest of the couple’s three sons and graduated in 1931 from high school in Prescott (Nevada County). He received a BA in chemistry from Hendrix College in 1935. In 1939, he received a Bachelor of Commercial Science in accounting from Southeastern University in Washington DC. Scott married Ruth Hirst in 1940, …

Shank, Mark H. (Execution of)

Mark H. Shank was an Akron, Ohio, attorney executed at Tucker State Prison Farm on March 8, 1935, for poisoning four members of the Alvin Colley family in Arkansas. Mark H. Shank was a partner in Akron’s Cain & Shank law firm. He was defending a man named Clarence Braucher on a forgery charge and hired Alvin Colley, a young machine operator who lived in Medina, Ohio, in 1930, to steal documents in the case from the prosecutor’s office. After bragging around Akron about the crime and Shank’s role in it, Colley and his family fled to Arkansas, living in Hot Springs (Garland County) as the Roy Fetty family. On August 15, 1933, Shank and the Colleys went for a …

Sharp, William (Murder of)

Several online lynching lists and the Equal Justice Initiative indicate that an African American man named George Bert was lynched in Desha County on July 21, 1883. Investigation of this lynching reveals a number of confusing reports. While the Wheeling Intelligencer lists the victim as George Bert, other papers identify him as Albert Beth, Albert Best, Albert Vess, and Albert Vest. The incident also led to an interesting discussion at the time on the state’s practice of leasing state prisoners to convict farms across Arkansas. The reported lynching arose out of the murder of a prisoner named William Sharp by an overseer named Alfred Werner (occasionally referred to as Warner) on the Desha County prison farm. (The Wheeling Intelligencer gives …

Simms, Lee (Trial and Execution of)

A young African-American man named Lee Simms (sometimes identified as Sims) was executed in Little Rock (Pulaski County) on September 5, 1913; he was the first person to die in Arkansas’s new electric chair. In June 1913, the Arkansas General Assembly passed a law specifying that future executions would be carried out at the state penitentiary in Little Rock using the electric chair. Prior to this, executions had been performed in the county where the crime occurred, and hanging was used. According to the Newark Journal, Arkansas’s chair was a “home-made product,” built at the University of Arkansas (UA) in Fayetteville (Washington County) at a cost of $702.05. It was tested successfully in mid-August on a large steer and found …

Smith, Pamela A.

Pamela A. Smith became the first African American woman to head the United States Park Police when she was appointed in 2021. She served for a little over a year before resigning to take a position with the Washington DC Police Department, later rising to the position of chief of police. Pamela A. Smith was born on January 4, 1968, in Pine Bluff (Jefferson County) to Walter Lee Smith Sr. and Eddie Mae Bass Sanders. Her parents divorced when she was young, and Smith was raised by her mother and her grandmother, Ellatrise Bass. Growing up on the east side of Pine Bluff, she went through the local schools—Forrest Park and Oak Park Elementary Schools, Southeast Middle School, and Dial …

Speers, J. E. (Execution of)

J. E. Speers was hanged on May 27, 1892, in Magnolia (Columbia County) for the slaying of a Ouachita County timber man, a crime he claimed was committed in self-defense. J. E. Speers was born in 1863 in St. Francis County. He married Annie Hutson, “a rustic beauty,” near Brinkley (Monroe County) twenty years later, and they would have five children, two of whom lived. Speers worked as a railroad engineer for some time, but by 1892 “for several years ha[d] been employed in various capacities about saw mills.” The Arkansas Gazette described him as “one of the Smith and Wesson gentry, and an all around tough.” Speers was working at a mill near Camden (Ouachita County) as a night …

Staner, Tom (Trial and Execution of)

The execution of Thomas Preston (Tom) Staner, sometimes spelled “Stainer,” on November 2, 1877, was the last execution to take place in Saline County. Staner was hanged for the murder of Harriet “Hattie” Staner (his uncle’s wife) and her neighbor, Parcell (or “Parlee”) Taylor, at the Staner house on Sulfur Springs Road about eighteen miles northwest of Benton (Saline County). Staner’s weapon of an iron poker, as well as the Staner family Bible and a framed photograph of Mack Staner, are all on display in the front room of the Gann Museum of Saline County. On January 23, 1877, McHenry “Mack” Staner left his home with a load of cotton bound for Little Rock (Pulaski County). His wife Harriet “remained …

Stansberry, John (Execution of)

John Stansberry was hanged on July 9, 1890, at Fort Smith (Sebastian County) for the murder of his wife, a crime he denied committing to the end. John Stansberry and Mollie Eubanks were married in Newton County, Missouri, in October 1885. Stansberry visited the Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma) in early 1889, and he moved with his wife and one-year-old daughter to the Pottawatomie Nation that August. A month later, his wife returned from visiting a neighbor and found the child “with a ghastly wound in its head and it soon expired.” Stansberry told his wife the little girl had fallen off a piece of furniture. The Stansberrys then moved to the Creek Nation. Mollie Stansberry was murdered on the night …

Strickland, Jacob (Execution of)

Jacob Strickland was a U.S. Army infantryman who was executed in 1828 for the murder of a fellow soldier in one of the earliest public judicial executions in the Arkansas Territory. Jacob Strickland, a twenty-seven-year-old farmer from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, enlisted in Company H of the Seventh U.S. Infantry Regiment on December 13, 1826; he was listed as five feet seven inches tall with hazel eyes, sandy hair, and a ruddy complexion. He proved not to be a very dedicated soldier, as he was reported as deserting from a base at Natchez, Mississippi, on March 22, 1827, being apprehended the next day. He apparently returned to service. Private Strickland was serving with the Seventh at Cantonment Gibson in what is now …

Tatum, Luke (Execution of)

Luke Tatum was an African American preacher who was executed at Camden (Ouachita County) on January 31, 1893, for murdering his wife in Union County, though he denied committing the crime to the end. Luke Tatum, described as “a large man, coal black and of ordinary intelligence,” lived with his wife Eliza about eleven miles east of El Dorado (Union County). On July 13, 1892, her body was found in a wooded area, “the skull…crushed in and the neck broken” and a bloody pine knot lying nearby. An inquest concluded that “Eliza Tatum…came to her death at the hands of Luke Tatum, on or about July 10, 1892.” Tatum waived his preliminary hearing so the case would go to a …

Taylor, Henry (Execution of)

Henry Taylor was an African American Baptist preacher who was hanged at Forrest City (St. Francis County) on June 27, 1879, for the rape of a seven-year-old Black girl, a crime he denied up to his death. Henry Taylor was a hired hand on the farm of the family of Martha Anthony, aged seven, near Wheatley (St. Francis County). He was left in charge of the children while the parents went to church on September 13, 1878, and when they left, the Arkansas Democrat reported, “he threw the child upon the ground and attempted to outrage her.” Taylor was arrested and jailed in Forrest City until his trial in April 1879. During the trial, he claimed that Martha’s mother had …

Taylor, Luther (Execution of)

Luther B. Taylor was hanged at Corning (Clay County) on April 21, 1882, for a murder he claimed was committed by another man. Luther B. Taylor was born in Clay County around 1858, the son of “industrious and respectable” parents. He was of medium height and had “dark blue eyes and an intelligent countenance” but, by the early 1880s, “had been regarded as a dangerous character” who had been involved in Reconstruction-era violence in southern Missouri, where “he was credited with having killed as many men as the most ferocious partisan.” On December 29, 1881, Taylor left the Iron Mountain Railroad depot at Nellville (Clay County) with Riley Black and William Mullholland. As they were walking home, Taylor reportedly pulled …

Taylor, Marion

Marion Taylor Jr. was the first African American officer in the Arkansas State Police, serving as a public service spokesman and an instructor at the state police academy. Marion Taylor Jr. was born on January 18, 1940, in Dermott (Chicot County) to Marion Taylor Sr. and Bessie White Taylor. His father supported the family with employment at Missouri Pacific Hospital and Our Lady of Nazareth Nursing Home, and the family attended St. Bartholomew Catholic Church in Little Rock (Pulaski County). A 1957 graduate of Horace Mann High School, Taylor earned a bachelor’s degree in political science at Arkansas Baptist College in Little Rock and an MS in education at what is now Ouachita Baptist University in Arkadelphia (Clark County). Taylor …

Tee-o-lit-es (Execution of)

On June 29, 1883, a Native American man (some sources say Creek or Seminole) named Tee-o-lit-es (sometimes referred to as Tualista, Teolitse, and other names as well) was executed in Fort Smith (Sebastian County) for the 1881 murder of Emanuel Cochran. Little is known about either Tee-o-lit-es or Cochran, except that the Arkansas Gazette reported that Tee-o-lit-es was twenty-five years old. In some accounts, Tee-o-lit-es was vilified. An article in the Gazette headlined “Human Fiends” referred to him as “a trifling, lazy vagabond” and commented on his “wicked face.” In his book Hell on the Border, S. W. Harman refers to him as “a fair sample of the uneducated Indian, uncouth and only half civilized.” According to accounts, in the …

Thomas, Henry Andrew “Heck”

Henry Andrew “Heck” Thomas became one of the best-known officers of the law in Arkansas and Indian Territory (later Oklahoma). His reputation as a fearless crime fighter stemmed from a determination to bring felons to justice and from the notorious characters he encountered. Tall and lean, with dark eyes and a mustache, Thomas was the image of the frontier lawman, usually attired in knee-high boots, corduroy trousers, and a flannel shirt. Thomas, and others like him, helped combat frontier criminals in order to make the region safe for settlers. Heck Thomas was born on January 6, 1850, in Oxford, Georgia, the last child of twelve of Martha Ann Fullwood Bedell Thomas and Lovick Pierce Thomas. He acquired the nickname “Heck” …

Thompson, William B. “Buck” (Execution of)

William B. “Buck” Thompson was hanged on December 17, 1875, in Lewisburg (Conway County) for the fatal wounding of Rebecca Stover, a local widow. The 1870 federal census shows John B. Stover, a wealthy farmer, living at Perry County’s Bentley Township south of Lewisburg with wife Mary and five children, including seventeen-year-old Thomas. Mary Stover died in 1872, and John Stover apparently married a woman named Rebecca. John Stover died in May 1875, and his sons-in-law, including John R. Snapp, were made executors of his estate. In a letter to the Arkansas Gazette, someone identified as A. W. R. wrote that “it appears that Stover was married to a woman unlawfully and the heirs were anxious to get her off …

Three Guardsmen

The Three Guardsmen were three U.S. marshals based in Fort Smith (Sebastian County) who became famous for their effort to track down the Doolin Gang, also known as the Wild Bunch, in Oklahoma in the early 1890s. When the three accomplished lawmen teamed up in 1891, they spent the next five years pursuing the group, finally capturing gang leader Bill Doolin in January 1896, only to have him escape from the Guthrie Federal Prison less than six months later. They tracked him down again, but refusing to surrender, Doolin was killed in a shootout on August 25, 1896. The leader of the Three Guardsmen was Henry Andrew “Heck” Thomas, who was born in 1850 in Athens, Georgia. Thomas was joined …

Tillman, John Arthur

John Arthur Tillman was the last person executed by hanging in the state of Arkansas. Accused of murdering a girlfriend, Tillman insisted upon his innocence to the day of his death. John Arthur Tillman was born in January 1891, the third oldest of nine children of John Franklin Tillman, a farmer and cattle breeder, and Lennie Belle Townsell Tillman of Delaware (Logan County). His arrest in 1913 was connected to the March 10 disappearance of Amanda Stephens, age nineteen, who lived north of Delaware. Friends and neighbors said that the two were “seeing each other,” and Stephens left behind a note pinned to her pillow suggesting that she was running away. According to later newspaper reports, she had told friends …

Trammell, Albert (Execution of)

Albert Trammell was a Black preacher who was hanged at Rosston (Nevada County) on December 27, 1877, for the 1868 murder of his wife. The 1870 U.S. Census for Ouachita County shows that a twenty-eight-year-old farm worker named Albert Trammell was living in Camden (Ouachita County); he could be the same man who had killed his wife Nancy (some sources say her name was Caroline) two years earlier. According to a newspaper account, Trammell “suspected the fidelity of his wife to her marital duties” and borrowed a gun from one person and buckshot from another. Early on the morning of December 29, 1868, Trammell went outside their cabin, stuck the barrel of his rifle through a crack in the wall …

Triple Execution of 1994

On the night of August 3, 1994, three inmates of the Arkansas Department of Correction were put to death at the Cummins Unit for their participation in the same crime. Convicted of a murder and robbery committed in Rogers (Benton County) on January 8, 1981, the three men were executed at one-hour intervals. On the night of January 8, 1981, the home of Donald Lehman and his family was the scene of a home invasion. Four masked men rang the doorbell and burst into the home. At least two were armed with handguns, and a third carried a chain. Lehman was thrown into his bedroom and repeatedly shot and struck with the chain, killing him. Lehman’s wife and daughter were …

Triple Execution of 1997

A triple execution took place at the Cummins Unit of the Arkansas Department of Correction on January 8, 1997. The first two inmates to be executed, Paul Ruiz and Earl Van Denton, were convicted of murders perpetrated during a post-escape crime spree. Ruiz and Van Denton escaped together from an Oklahoma prison on June 23, 1977. Van Denton was serving a life sentence for murder, while Ruiz was serving life for armed robbery. The pair moved across Oklahoma and into Arkansas, committing a number of crimes. On June 29, near the town of Magazine (Logan County), the men kidnapped town marshal Marvin Ritchie and handcuffed him in the back seat of his patrol car. Driving the patrol car, the two …

Tucker Telephone

The “Tucker Telephone” was a torture device invented in Arkansas and regularly used at the Tucker State Prison Farm (now the Tucker Unit of the Arkansas Department of Correction) in Jefferson County. It was likely used on inmates until the 1970s. The Tucker Telephone consisted of an old-fashioned crank telephone wired in sequence with two batteries. Electrodes coming from it were attached to a prisoner’s big toe and genitals. The electrical components of the phone were modified so that cranking the telephone sent an electric shock through the prisoner’s body. The device was reputedly constructed in the 1960s by, depending upon the source, a former trusty in the prison, a prison superintendent, or an inmate doctor; it was administered as …

Tucker Unit

aka: Tucker Prison Farm

Tucker Unit, often referred to simply as Tucker or Tucker prison farm, is a 4,500-acre maximum security prison and working farm located in Tucker (Jefferson County), roughly twenty-five miles northeast of Pine Bluff (Jefferson County). It is one of thirteen prison units in the Arkansas Department of Correction. Tucker Unit is not to be confused with the Maximum Security Unit, which was built in 1983 and is also located in Tucker. Tucker is the second-oldest prison in Arkansas (Cummins Unit is the oldest). Tucker was accredited by the American Correctional Association in 1983, but for many years, the prison had a tarnished reputation and was at the center of the prison scandals of the 1960s and subsequent reform efforts of …

Tucker, James (Execution of)

James Tucker was an African American man hanged at Paris (Logan County) on May 30, 1884, for murdering his partner at their farm on Red Bench Mountain. James Tucker and Aaron Barker rented property on Red Bench Mountain in Logan County, where they built a cabin and were growing cotton on their small farm. Tucker suspected that Barker had some money, and on the night of December 27, 1883, he “stole upon his victim while asleep and discharged both loads of a double-barreled gun into his person.” After stealing “the trifling sum that he possessed,” Tucker fled deeper into the mountains. The erstwhile farmer “became an outlaw, terrorizing the community and defying the authorities.” He evaded repeated attempts to catch …

U.S. Marshals Service (USMS)

The U.S. Marshals Service (USMS) is the oldest federal law enforcement agency in the nation. Divided into ninety-four districts, the agency’s structure aligns with that of the United States district courts. Arkansas has two districts—the Western District headquartered in Fort Smith (Sebastian County) and the Eastern District headquartered in Little Rock (Pulaski County). During the nineteenth century, fugitives often fled to Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma) in an effort to escape prosecution. Apprehending these criminals was a dangerous assignment for the U.S. deputy marshals—consequently, there are more deputy and special deputy marshals buried in the Fort Smith region than anywhere else in the nation. On September 24, 1789, George Washington signed Senate Bill 1, which included the Judiciary Act, of which …

Underwood, James M. (Execution of)

James M. Underwood was hanged on December 7, 1883, near Dardanelle (Yell County) for the shotgun slaying of a prominent local farmer. James M. Underwood, a native of Tennessee, lived at the home of “well-to-do farmer” Robert J. Pendergrass about five miles south of Dardanelle, as he worked on the Pendergrass farm. However, “an intimacy between Mr. P.’s wife and Underwood caused a quarrel in the family, which ended by Underwood changing his home.” He moved in with Joshua Toomer nearby. On September 1, 1883, Pendergrass drove his wagon into Dardanelle to conduct some business. When he was nearing his home later that day, “he was fired on from the brush and killed instantly.…Mr. P. had received the buckshot in …

United States District Court for the Western District of Arkansas

The United States District Court for the Western District of Arkansas is the federal trial court of record for thirty-four counties in western, south-central, and north-central Arkansas. With headquarters in Fort Smith (Sebastian County) and branches in Fayetteville (Washington County), Harrison (Boone County), Texarkana (Miller County), Hot Springs (Garland County), and El Dorado (Union County), the three judges and two magistrates of the Western District under Article III, Section 1 of the U.S. Constitution exercise judicial power over “all cases in law and equity, arising under [the] constitution, the laws of the United States, and treaties made or which shall be made.” Generally, the Western District exercises power over two broadly defined types of civil cases: those that involve a …

Varner Unit

The Varner Unit is a detention facility run by the Arkansas Department of Correction. It is located in the Choctaw Township of Lincoln County, along U.S. Highway 65, about thirty miles south of Pine Bluff (Jefferson County). The Varner Unit was constructed in response to the state’s fast-growing inmate population; other state facilities had been expanded prior to Varner’s construction. When it opened in 1987, it could accommodate 300 prisoners; its capacity was increased to 700 and then later to around 1,700. The Varner Unit is made up of two separate units: the Supermax Unit and the Varner Unit. The Supermax Unit was opened in 2000 and in 2003 became home to all the state’s male death row inmates. In …

Vaughn, Samuel (Execution of)

Samuel Vaughn was hanged at Fayetteville (Washington County) on April 27, 1894, for hiring a man to murder a business rival. Samuel F. Vaughn (sometimes spelled Vaughan) was born in Morgan County, Tennessee, in 1848. His family moved to Arkansas and settled in Madison County three years later, and he would become popular enough to be elected to positions as a constable and county assessor. He became involved in a land purchase with Andrew Gage, who had served as county clerk. It then went sour, leading to a contentious lawsuit. On September 26, 1891, Gage was working on his Madison County farm when he was shot in the back “and killed instantly,” with the Arkansas Democrat reporting that “the charge …

Walker, Dock (Execution of)

Dock Walker was a thirty-four-year-old African American man hanged at Texarkana (Miller County) on June 27, 1884, for the shotgun slaying of a friend. Dock Walker was born enslaved in North Carolina but moved with his brother to Monroe, Louisiana, after emancipation, and the two established a farm there on the Ouachita River. Walker’s brother “made a hellish assault upon a highly respectable white lady” and was burned at the stake, after which Walker moved to Miller County around 1882 with a “pal,” Lucius Grant. The pair settled about twelve miles from Texarkana. According to the Arkansas Gazette, Walker “had a pretty good reputation when sober, but when under the influence of whisky, was very quarrelsome and inclined to fight.” …

Walker, Nick (Execution of)

Nick Walker was a young African American man who was hanged in Little Rock (Pulaski County) on March 23, 1883, for the murder of a romantic rival the year before. Nick Walker was born into slavery near Dallas, Texas, around 1859. He said he never knew either of his parents but at some point moved to a place near Camden (Ouachita County) where an aunt lived, staying there until 1878. He eventually moved to Little Rock and worked for the Iron Mountain Railroad. He became enamored of a prostitute named Susan Robinson in Argenta (now North Little Rock in Pulaski County), whom he knew from Ouachita County. Robinson was also involved with a man named Tom Jenkins (sometimes referred to …