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Sunday, April 04, 1999
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal
Some executed by gunfire,
hanging, gas, lethal injection
By Sean Whaley
Donrey Capital Bureau
CARSON CITY -- Nevada has 84 men and one woman on death row, with Kenneth McKague, who killed two motel owners in Reno in 1978, waiting the longest for execution.
Since the Legislature reinstated the death penalty in Nevada in 1977, seven men have been executed, the last six by lethal injection. The first man executed after the death penalty became law again was Jesse Bishop in 1979. He was the last man to die in the state's gas chamber, an execution device used first in Nevada, starting in 1924.
The most recent execution in Nevada was that of Roderick Abeyta, who died by lethal injection Oct. 5, for the murder of a former girlfriend, Donna Martin, in Las Vegas in 1989.
From 1861, when the Nevada Territory was created, to 1903, executions were carried out by hanging in the county seats in which the person was convicted. The number of executions carried out during this period is unknown, although 19 have been confirmed.
One of those was in 1890, when the one woman executed in Nevada, Elizabeth Potts, was hanged in Elko for murdering and dismembering a man in Carlin and burying his body. Potts and her husband were hanged for the crime on a double gallows.
Beginning in 1903, executions by hanging were carried out at Nevada State Prison in the capital. Through 1912, 10 men were hanged, including four on one day in 1905 using a double gallows.
In 1913, Nevada devised a unique execution device. An automated firing squad -- three rifles mounted on an iron frame that fired simultaneously -- was used once, to execute Andriza Mircovich.
No further executions were carried out in Nevada until 1924, when the gas chamber was used. Thirty-two men were killed in this manner, the first being Gee Jon, 28, on Feb. 8, 1924, for murdering Tom Quong Kee in Mineral County.
Since executions have been carried out at the state prison beginning in 1905, 49 men have been executed, 10 by hanging, one by shooting, 32 by lethal gas and six by lethal injection.
Of the total current death row population, 43 prisoners are white, 35 are black, six are Hispanic and one is Asian.
The only woman on death row is Priscilla Ford, who intentionally drove onto a downtown Reno sidewalk on Thanksgiving Day in 1980, killing seven pedestrians.
The growth in Nevada's death row population has slowed in recent years. Only three death sentences were imposed in 1998, compared with seven in 1997 and 10 in 1996.
Nevada's death row inmates are housed in the state's only maximum-security prison at Ely.
Executions are carried out at the Nevada State Prison in the capital. The old gas chamber is used as the execution room. After the inmate is strapped down to a table, a combination of three lethal drugs are administered.
Historical information provided by State Archivist Guy Rocha.
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