The first two people executed in the State of West Virginia were Daniel Grogan and Thomas Boice, both convicted of murder and hanged in Wood County in 1866.
[1] The last person executed by West Virginia was Elmer Bruner on April 3, 1959, for the robbery-murder of Ruby Miller committed with the claw-end of a hammer in Huntington.
No federal executions have taken place in West Virginia,[4] but two were sentenced to death in 2007, George Lecco and Valerie Friend, for the murder of an informant who was supplying federal law enforcement with information about the couple's cocaine drug ring.
[5] Those verdicts and sentences were overturned in 2009 due to juror misconduct,[6] and the retrials ended with life without parole and 35 years for Lecco and Friend respectively.
[7][8] Along with Iowa,[9] West Virginia became the final pre-Furman state to abolish capital punishment in 1965.