Aaron Mitchell (murderer)
American murderer
Aaron C. Mitchell (d. April 12, 1967) was a murderer, convicted of the February 15, 1963, killing of Sacramento police officer Arnold Gamble, who was responding to a robbery committed by Mitchell. He was sentenced to death, and was executed in the gas chamber. Mitchell, who was from Alabama, had a lengthy criminal record that spanned 20 years. Mitchell was the last inmate to be executed involuntarily before the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in Furman v. Georgia in 1972, which invalided all existing death penalty statutes at the time.
Prior crimes
During his murder trial, Mitchell testified that in 1947, at the age of 17, he was arrested for stealing a car in Missouri. He was sentenced to two years in prison for this crime and served 14 months. Upon his release, he committed another car theft in Tennessee, for which he was sentenced in October 1948 to three years on a chain gang. He escaped after 10 days, but was rearrested on other charges in Chicago in 1951 and returned to Tennessee.
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