On the Beat in the Bluegrass

Get the latest on Marco Chapman’s execution.

By Brandon Ortiz

Executions in Kentucky have been rare the last 40 years, but the death penalty has a long history in the Bluegrass state.

Chapman is expected to be the 165th person executed at the Kentucky State Penitentiary, and only the second to die by lethal injection. The others died by electric chair.

The racial breakdown is disproportionate: 80 whites and 84 blacks. Blacks currently make up less than 10 percent of Kentucky’s population, although that proportion was higher in the early 20th century.

Chapman would be the third inmate executed since the death penalty was reinstated in 1977, and only the fourth since 1956, when three people were executed. The death penalty was once common in Kentucky, with 161 men being executed in Eddyville from 1911 to 1955. (Kentucky did not begin to keep complete records of executions until 1911.) The most inmates to be executed in one night is seven, on July 13, 1928.

Nine others were legally hanged elsewhere in Kentucky between 1920 and 1938.

Only 50 of Kentucky’s 120 counties have sent someone to Death Row. The last time someone convicted in Fayette County was executed was in 1943. Jefferson County has set the most inmates to death with 44.

After Chapman’s execution, there will be 35 men and one woman on Death Row. Thirteen of them have been on Death Row longer than 20 years. Thirty inmates are white, six are black and one is Hispanic.

Source: Kentucky Department of Corrections

Get the latest on Marco Chapman’s execution.