The Execution of Wallace Wilkerson

@article{Acker2017TheEO,
  title={The Execution of Wallace Wilkerson},
  author={James R. Acker and Ryan Champagne},
  journal={Criminal Justice Review},
  year={2017},
  volume={42},
  pages={349 - 367}
}
Wallace Wilkerson was executed by a Utah firing squad in 1879 after the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed the constitutionality of his sentence. Shots from the marksmen’s rifles missed his heart. Not strapped into the chair where he had been seated, Wilkerson lurched onto the ground and exclaimed, “My God!…They missed it!” He groaned, continued breathing, and was pronounced dead some 27 min later. Relying on contemporaneous news accounts and legal documents, this article describes Wilkerson’s crime… 
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American Capital Punishment Over Changing Times: Policies and Practices
  • J. R. Acker
  • Law
    Handbooks of Sociology and Social Research
  • 2019
This chapter provides a brief history of capital punishment in the United States, including legislative developments and the Supreme Court’s major constitutional rulings through the present. It…

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