Arthur Hodges

Arthur Hodges (1893 – December 18, 1914) was a white man who became the first white person in Arkansas to be executed by means of the electric chair. He was convicted of the murder of Clark County Constable William Morgan Garner. Hodges was also the fourth person executed by electrocution in Arkansas and one of eight men scheduled to be executed by the state in a 16-day period. However, only two of those executions were ever carried out.

Background Arthur Hodges was originally from Okolona, Arkansas. Newspapers described Hodges as having a "mind of a child" and being intellectually disabled to the point that reporters were speculating on the morning of his execution whether he was aware he was going to die. At the time of the murder for which Hodges was executed, he was visiting relatives near Amity, Arkansas, a city in Clark County.

Murder The 21-year-old Hodges was convicted of killing Clark County constable William Morgan Garner while resisting arrest. The shooting took place on July 3, 1913, and Garner died the next day, on July 4.

Hodges claimed that he was abused physically by Garner, and that while en route to the jail Garner threatened to shoot him. Hodges then claimed that he produced his own pistol, which Garner had not located, and fired in an effort to frighten Garner. Instead, Garner was shot twice, killing him.

After Hodges' death sentence was upheld, on October 12, 1914, Governor George Washington Hays set a new execution date of November 14, 1914. Hodges then petitioned for an inquiry to be made to investigate whether he was criminally insane at the time of Garner's murder. When this failed, Governor Hays rescheduled the execution for November 21, which was later pushed back to the final date of December 18. Hodges spent his last hours praying with a group of religious advisors, singing hymns, and being baptized; he also arranged for some of his affects to be sent to a sister who lived in Texas. Religious advisors who attended to Hodges in his last moments stated that Hodges remained hopeful until the last moment for a delay in his execution; when the Arkansas Supreme Court declared their refusal to intervene and permitted Hodges' execution to move forward, Hodges remarked to a reporter from the Arkansas Gazette, "I won't have any girl now, will I?" At the time of Hodges' execution, the electric chair in Arkansas was housed at the Arkansas State Penitentiary in Little Rock, Arkansas. After his execution, Hodges' body was laid to rest in that prison's cemetery.