David Joseph Watson

David Joseph Watson (September 23, 1923 – September 15, 1948) was a member of the United States Navy who was executed by the U.S. government for a murder committed on the high seas (a federal offense). Watson was convicted of the murder of Benjamin Leroy Hobbs, a fellow seaman, aboard a U.S. naval ship that was docked in Florida. After two trials, Watson was executed in Florida's electric chair since, at the time, federal death row inmates were executed by the primary method of execution prescribed in the state where they committed their offense. Watson was the third inmate executed on a federal death warrant under President Harry S. Truman, as well as the second executed in Florida, after James Alderman in 1929. He was the first, and likely only, federal condemned man to be electrocuted in Florida. who was "short, stocky, and powerfully built," with an "above average" education. He was a native of Portsmouth and Norfolk, Virginia, who spent some time in the Virginia Manual Labor School, a reform school in Petersburg, Virginia, when he was a teenager. His victim, 19-year-old Benjamin Leroy Hobbs, was from Nebo, North Carolina, and lived with his impoverished and widowed mother. At the time he was murdered, Hobbs was five days away from being honorably discharged, after which he planned to move in with his mother to help her with the family farm.

During Watson's second trial, his defense attempted to paint Watson as someone afflicted with a "psychopathic personality." Attorney A.C. Dressler stated during the defense's closing statements, "[Watson] has a warped mind; he is a lost soul. If you comply with the oath you took, you cannot kill. You cannot send this boy to the chair." Watson's other defense attorney, John G. Sawyer, argued that Watson should be put away in prison for life "for the good of society. His life should not be taken."

According to the Associated Press, Watson spent his final hours praying with a minister and singing hymns. He also received a final visit from his mother. On the morning of Wednesday, September 15, 1948, Watson was executed in the electric chair at the Florida State Prison in Raiford, Florida, where Florida kept their electric chair. He was placed in the chair at 9:11 A.M. and pronounced dead a few minutes later. From 1936 onward, federal inmates were executed by the method used by the state where they committed their capital crime. During both Alderman's execution in 1929 and Watson's execution in 1948, the electric chair was Florida's method of execution, as the state had adopted the electric chair in 1923 and, save for Alderman's federal execution, exclusively used the electric chair instead of hanging starting in October 1924.