Robert Charles Gleason, Jr. was an American murderer sentenced to death and executed by the Commonwealth of Virginia for two separate murders of two of his cellmates. Gleason was an execution volunteer who vowed to continue killing in prison if he did not receive capital punishment.
Crimes and sentencing
In 2008, Gleason was sentenced to life in prison for the 2007 murder of Michael Kent Jamerson in Amherst County, Virginia. Gleason murdered Jamerson to cover up his involvement in a drug gang. In 2009, while serving a life sentence at Wallens Ridge State Prison. Gleason had become frustrated with the Department of Corrections because they refused to move out his new, severely mentally ill cellmate, Harvey Watson. Watson had been serving a 100-year sentence over a murder dating back to August 11, 1983. Gleason hog-tied, beat and strangled 63-year-old Watson, on the 2-year anniversary of Jamerson's death. Gleason pleaded guilty. Both in court and in media interviews, Gleason vowed to continue killing if not given the death penalty. While awaiting sentencing at Red Onion State Prison, a highly secure prison for the state's most dangerous inmates, Gleason strangled 26-year-old Aaron Cooper through wire fencing that separated their individual cages in a prison yard on July 28, 2010. Cooper had been serving a 34-year sentence for robbery. Gleason was subsequently sentenced to death, voluntarily waived his appeals, and received his request. He chose the electric chair over lethal injection.
Execution
Gleason was executed by electric chair at Greensville Correctional Center in Jarratt, Virginia, on January 16, 2013, at 9:08pm. His last words were purportedly "Well, I hope Percy ain't going to forget to wet the sponge. Put me on the highway to Jackson and call my Irish buddies. Póg mo thóin. God bless." The phrase "," is translated from Irish as "Kiss my arse." His execution was the first to be carried out by electric chair since the March 2010 execution of Paul Warner Powell, also in Virginia. Gleason stands as the most recent person to die in the Virginia electric chair, the last person to die in the electric chair in any jurisdiction for almost six years until the November 2018 execution of Edmund Zagorski in Tennessee and the most recent person executed by electrocution in a jurisdiction other than the state of Tennessee.
