Wallace Wilkerson

Wallace Wilkerson (c. 1834 – May 16, 1879)[2] was an American stockman who was sentenced to death by the Territory of Utah for the murder of William Baxter.

On June 11, 1877, Baxter stopped at a saloon owned by James Hightower in the Tintic Mining District while on the way to Homansville.

[6][10] On November 28, state district judge P. H. Emerson sentenced Wilkerson to death and set an execution date of December 14, 1877.

[6][7] Wilkerson chose to be executed by firing squad instead of the other options of hanging or decapitation that were legal in the territory at the time.

[10] On January 8, 1879, attorneys E. D. Hoge and P. L. Williams submitted a writ of error that raised an argument of cruel and unusual punishment on behalf of Wilkerson to the Supreme Court of the United States during its October 1878 term.

On March 17, 1879, Justice Nathan Clifford delivered the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that upheld the verdict.

[7][11] Cruel and unusual punishments are forbidden by the Constitution, but the authorities referred to are quite sufficient to show that the punishment of shooting as a mode of executing the death penalty for the crime of murder in the first degree is not included in that category, within the meaning of the eighth amendment.On May 15, 1879, Wilkerson was transferred from Salt Lake City to a jail in Provo.

[5] Wilkerson gave a farewell speech thanking the law enforcement officers and shook hands with some of the 25 people present in the jail yard in Provo.

After being washed and placed in a coffin covered in black, the body was returned to Wilkerson's wife to be taken to Payson for burial.

[6] The Deseret News, published at the time by Brigham Young Jr., the son of deceased Latter Day Saint movement leader Brigham Young, proclaimed that "divine law has been executed and human law honored" because Wilkerson "atoned for that deed as far as it is possible so to do by the pouring out of his own blood.

"[5] In the April 2008 decision of Baze v. Rees, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas cited the case of Wilkerson v. Utah in affirming that Kentucky's method of execution by lethal injection did not constitute cruel and unusual punishment.