History notes that 350 people died in Pennsylvania’s electric chair. The last of them was a man from our region and his death marked the end of an era in Pennsylvania’s use of the death penalty.
On this day in 1961, the Philadelphia Inquirer ran this headline: “Elmo Fights Death Penalty”
Prior to 1976, only two states executed more people than Pennsylvania. And for almost 50 years, those executions happened in the electric chair at Rockview State Correctional Institute near State College.
The first such execution took place in 1915. John Talap, a Montgomery County man, was convicted of murdering his wife. He died in the state’s electric chair while 23 people, including his wife’s father, watched.
Over roughly the next half century, Pennsylvania executed about seven people a year in Rockview’s electric chair. The last of them was also a Montgomery County man. And he was one of our area’s most notorious killers.
In December of 1959, Bridgeport’s Elmo Smith abducted 16-year-old Maryann Theresa Mitchell from a Manayunk street corner. Smith raped Mitchell, bludgeoned her with a tire iron, and scrawled a bizarre message on her body in lipstick. He left her to die in a gully.
The coverage of Smith’s trial was so intense that authorities moved it from Norristown to Gettysburg. After 90 minutes of deliberation, a jury convicted the handyman of raping and murdering Mitchell.
On April 2nd 1962, Smith became the 350th person to die in Pennsylvania’s electric chair. He reportedly did not speak before his execution.
Smith’s death just so happened to come at an inflection point for Pennsylvania’s use of the death penalty. In 1971, outgoing Attorney General Fred Speaker, a Republican, used a strange legal maneuver to order the dismantling of the electric chair.
In 1972, the U.S. Supreme Court suspended the use of the death penalty. In 1976, it was reinstated and the death penalty remains on the books in Pennsylvania today. But the frequency of its use plummeted.
In 1990, Governor Bob Casey changed the state’s form of execution from electric chair to lethal injection. And although Pennsylvania has a fairly large number of death row inmates, it has executed very few of them.
Since 1962, the state has executed just three men — all of them in the 1990s and all of them by lethal injection. In each of those three cases, the prisoners waived their rights of appeal.
In 2015, Governor Tom Wolf placed a moratorium on executions. That moratorium remains in effect today.
The electric chair used to kill Elmo Smith was later transferred to the State Museum of Pennsylvania. It sits in storage and has never been exhibited.
Originally posted by Avi Wolfman-Arent (@Avi_WA) on Jan. 18, 2024.
