Having looked at the first execution in the District last week, it behooves me to follow up with the last one. It, too, took place on Capitol Hill; this time, in the D.C. jail.
On July 11, 1953, George W. Cassels (pictured), a two-year veteran of the D.C. police, was waiting for a colleague when he was approached by a store owner who said he had been robbed. The civilian pointed out the perpetrator to Cassels, who in turn began pursuit. In the course of the chase, Cassels was shot. Cassels was taken to the hospital, where he died a day later in spite of the best efforts of the doctors.
After a nine-hour manhunt, his killer, Robert Eugene Carter, was apprehended. Some six months later, Carter was found guilty of first degree murder, which carried with it a mandatory sentence of death. A month later, the execution was set for October 15 of that year.
As it happens with such cases, it was not until 1957 that Carter paid the ultimate price. On April 26 of that year, he was taken to the “small, windowless death chamber [that had] been built on the fourth floor of the old jail” as the Washington Post described the place in an October 22, 1992, article. Up until the chamber had been built, executions –both by hanging and later by electric chair– were carried out in the dining hall of the jail.
Carter’s final moments were captured by William Burden, staff reporter for the Post, and printed the following day:
Carter walked calmly to his death with a prayer on his lips. He smiled briefly at the Rev. Carl J. Breitfeller, Corrections Department Catholic chaplain, who baptized him as a Catholic on Christmas Day, but showed no other emotion.
He would be the 44th or 45th person electrocuted at the D.C jail by the local authorities, and the 107th overall since 1864. Even before Carter’s death, the pace of executions had slowed dramatically: The gap between the previous execution and Carter’s was the longest on record. No one else was put to death in the District after Carter, even though mandatory death penalties for first degree murder were abolished five years later, in 1962.
The D.C. jail around 1920, when the electric chair was installed (LOC)
Furthermore, in the ten following years, no further prisoners were put to death in the District, at which point all death penalties were abolished in accordance with the Supreme Court Furman decision in 1972. In 1992, a referendum that would have reinstated the death penalty failed to pass.
The 1920s vintage electric chair used for Carter’s execution was eventually moved to the D.C. archives, where it can be viewed today– especially the prominent GE logo on it.