Roosevelt Spears Execution
1953
Information comes from Pieces of the Past, Volume 2, page 220 by Jim Reis, and reprinted here with the author's permission.
Roosevelt Spears was the oldest Northern Kentucky man to die in the electric chair. He was 44 when he was arrested for shooting 27 year-old Charles Thompson. Both were black men from Newport.
Spears, who lived on Saratoga Street and was manager of the Sportsman's Club in Newport, was charged with shooting Thompson twice in the neck and once in the mouth in a dispute over Spears' girl friend.
Convicted in the summer of 1949, Spears appealed on the grounds his court-appointed attorney was new and relatively inexperienced. The appeal was denied and Spears was executed on Feb 27, 1953-the last person sentenced and executed in the electric chair for a crime in Northern Kentucky.