• DOI:10.1177/0734016817702193
Corpus ID: 148715242

The Execution of Wallace Wilkerson

@article{Acker2017TheEO,
  title={The Execution of Wallace Wilkerson},
  author={J. R. Acker and Ryan Champagne},
  journal={Criminal Justice Review},
  year={2017},
  volume={42},
  pages={349 - 367}
}

• J. R. Acker, Ryan Champagne
• Published 2017
• History
• Criminal Justice Review

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… Expand