Tennessee Executes Quadruple Murderer

Nicholas Todd Sutton who, at age 18, killed his grandmother, a high school friend and a Knoxville contractor in 1979, then killed a fellow prison inmate in 1985, was executed in the electric chair at 7:28 p.m. last night.  The Tennessean reports  that Sutton, who found religion while his appeals dragged through the courts, told observers, “I’m just grateful to be a servant of God.”   Jack Durschlag of Fox News reports that Sutton’s killing spree began in 1979 when he knocked his grandmother Dorothy Sutton unconscious with a piece of firewood, wrapping her in garbage bags and chaining her to cinder blocks before throwing her alive into the Nolichucky River.  He later shot and killed Charles Almon, 46, and beat his friend Charles Large, 19, to death.

Following his conviction for killing this grandmother, Sutton led authorities to Large’s body and confessed to murdering Almon.  Experts insist that, at age 18, a person’s brain is too immature to determine right from wrong and should not be eligible for a death sentence.  Sutton was sentenced to life in prison for the three murders.  Six years later, at age 24, presumably with a more mature brain, Sutton and another inmate fatally stabbed child rapist Carl Estep 36 times.  For his fourth murder, Sutton was sentenced to death.   In Tennessee condemned inmates can select lethal injection or electrocution.  Sutton selected electrocution.