John Eldon Smith
John Eldon Smith (September 17, 1930 – December 15, 1983) was convicted of the murders of Ronald and Juanita Akins. He was executed by the state of Georgia via electric chair at the age of 53. He became the first person to be executed in Georgia since 1976 when the death penalty was reinstated. Background John Eldon Smith According to a biography his attorneys prepared for Georgia's Department of Offender Rehabilitation, Smith grew up in Pennsylvania, working summers on a farm. Eventually he became a volunteer firefighter and joined the Insurance Company of North America as a fire-underwriter trainee. Afterwards, he joined the United States Army, where, after four years of service and being awarded the Good Conduct Medal, was honorably discharged. Smith's first marriage, to Catherine Fitzgerald, lasted from 1953 to 1963. They remarried and then divorced again in 1975. While married, they had one son. In 1973, after the dissolution of Smith's marriage, he relocated to New Je ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania (; ( Pennsylvania Dutch: )), officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a state spanning the Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes regions of the United States. It borders Delaware to its southeast, Maryland to its south, West Virginia to its southwest, Ohio to its west, Lake Erie and the Canadian province of Ontario to its northwest, New York to its north, and the Delaware River and New Jersey to its east. Pennsylvania is the fifth-most populous state in the nation with over 13 million residents as of 2020. It is the 33rd-largest state by area and ranks ninth among all states in population density. The southeastern Delaware Valley metropolitan area comprises and surrounds Philadelphia, the state's largest and nation's sixth most populous city. Another 2.37 million reside in Greater Pittsburgh in the southwest, centered around Pittsburgh, the state's second-largest and Western Pennsylvania's largest city. The state's su ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Newspapers
A newspaper is a periodical publication containing written information about current events and is often typed in black ink with a white or gray background. Newspapers can cover a wide variety of fields such as politics, business, sports and art, and often include materials such as opinion columns, weather forecasts, reviews of local services, obituaries, birth notices, crosswords, editorial cartoons, comic strips, and advice columns. Most newspapers are businesses, and they pay their expenses with a mixture of subscription revenue, newsstand sales, and advertising revenue. The journalism organizations that publish newspapers are themselves often metonymically called newspapers. Newspapers have traditionally been published in print (usually on cheap, low-grade paper called newsprint). However, today most newspapers are also published on websites as online newspapers, and some have even abandoned their print versions entirely. Newspapers developed in the 17th ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Life Imprisonment In The United States
In the United States, life imprisonment is amongst the most severe punishments provided by law, depending on the state, and second only to the death penalty. According to a 2013 study, 1 of every 20,000 inhabitants of the U.S. were imprisoned for life . Many U.S. states can release a convict on parole after a decade or more has passed, but in California, people sentenced to life imprisonment can normally apply for parole after seven years. The laws in the United States categorize life sentences as "determinate life sentences" or "indeterminate life sentences," the latter indicating the possibility of an abridged sentence, usually through the process of parole. For example, sentences of "15 years to life," "25 years to life," or "life with mercy" are called "indeterminate life sentences", while a sentence of "life without the possibility of parole" or "life without mercy" is called a "determinate life sentence". The potential for parole is not assured but discretionary, making it an ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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First-degree Murder
Murder is the unlawful killing of another human without justification or valid excuse, especially the unlawful killing of another human with malice aforethought. ("The killing of another person without justification or excuse, especially the crime of killing a person with malice aforethought or with recklessness manifesting extreme indifference to the value of human life.") This state of mind may, depending upon the jurisdiction, distinguish murder from other forms of unlawful homicide, such as manslaughter. Manslaughter is killing committed in the absence of ''malice'',This is "malice" in a technical legal sense, not the more usual English sense denoting an emotional state. See malice (law). brought about by reasonable provocation, or diminished capacity. ''Involuntary'' manslaughter, where it is recognized, is a killing that lacks all but the most attenuated guilty intent, recklessness. Most societies consider murder to be an extremely serious crime, and thus that a per ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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12-gauge Shotgun
The gauge (or commonly bore in British English) of a firearm is a unit of measurement used to express the inner diameter (bore diameter) of the barrel. Gauge is determined from the weight of a solid sphere of lead that will fit the bore of the firearm and is expressed as the multiplicative inverse of the sphere's weight as a fraction of a pound, e.g., a one-twelfth pound lead ball fits a 12-gauge bore. Thus there are twelve 12-gauge balls per pound, etc. The term is related to the measurement of cannon, which were also measured by the weight of their iron round shot; an 8-pounder would fire an 8 lb (3.6 kg) ball. Gauge is commonly used today in reference to shotguns, though historically it was also used in large double rifles, which were made in sizes up to 2 bore during their heyday in the 1880s, being originally loaded with black powder cartridges. These very large rifles, called "elephant guns", were intended for use primarily in Africa and Asia for hunting lar ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Buckshot
A shotgun shell, shotshell or simply shell is a type of rimmed, cylindrical (straight-walled) cartridges used specifically in shotguns, and is typically loaded with numerous small, pellet-like spherical sub-projectiles called shot, fired through a smoothbore barrel with a tapered constriction at the muzzle to regulate the extent of scattering. A shell can sometimes also contain only a single large solid projectile known as a slug, fired usually through a rifled slug barrel. The hull usually consists of a paper or plastic tube often covered at the base by a metallic head cover which retains a primer, and the shot charge is typically contained by a wadding/sabot inside the case. The caliber of the shotshell is known as its gauge. The projectiles are traditionally made of lead, but other metals such as steel, tungsten and bismuth are also used due to restrictions on lead, or for performance reasons such as achieving higher shot velocities by reducing the mass of the shot c ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Prosecutor
A prosecutor is a legal representative of the prosecution in states with either the common law adversarial system or the Civil law (legal system), civil law inquisitorial system. The prosecution is the legal party responsible for presenting the case in a Criminal law, criminal jury trial, trial against an individual accused of breaking the law. Typically, the prosecutor represents the state or the government in the case brought against the accused person. Prosecutor as a legal professional Prosecutors are typically lawyers who possess a law degree, and are recognised as suitable legal professionals by the court in which they are acting. This may mean they have been Admission to the bar, admitted to the bar, or obtained a comparable qualification where available - such as Solicitor advocate, solicitor advocates in English law, England and Wales. They become involved in a criminal case once a suspect has been identified and Indictment, charges need to be filed. They are employe ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Shotgun
A shotgun (also known as a scattergun, or historically as a fowling piece) is a long gun, long-barreled firearm designed to shoot a straight-walled cartridge (firearms), cartridge known as a shotshell, which usually discharges numerous small pellets (petrology), pellet-like spherical sub-projectiles called shot (pellet), shot, or sometimes a single solid projectile called a shotgun slug, slug. Shotguns are most commonly smoothbore firearms, meaning that their gun barrels have no rifling on the inner wall, but rifled barrels for shooting slugs (slug barrels) are also available. Shotguns come in a wide variety of calibers and Gauge (firearms), gauges ranging from 5.5 mm (.22 inch) to up to , though the 12-gauge (18.53 mm or 0.729 in) and 20-gauge (15.63 mm or 0.615 in) bores are by far the most common. Almost all are breechloading, and can be single-barreled, double barreled shotgun, double-barreled, or in the form of a combination gun. Like rifles, ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Macon, Georgia
Macon ( ), officially Macon–Bibb County, is a consolidated city-county in the U.S. state of Georgia. Situated near the fall line of the Ocmulgee River, it is located southeast of Atlanta and lies near the geographic center of the state of Georgia—hence the city's nickname, "The Heart of Georgia". Macon had a population of 157,346 in the year 2020. It is the principal city of the Macon Metropolitan Statistical Area, which had a population of 233,802 in 2020. Macon is also the largest city in the Macon–Warner Robins Combined Statistical Area (CSA), a larger trading area with an estimated 420,693 residents in 2017; the CSA abuts the Atlanta metropolitan area just to the north. In a 2012 referendum, voters approved the consolidation of the governments of the City of Macon and Bibb County, thereby making Macon Georgia's fourth-largest city (just after Augusta). The two governments officially merged on January 1, 2014. Macon is served by three interstate highways: I-16 ( ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Bibb County, Georgia
Bibb County is located in the U.S. state of Georgia. As of the 2020 census, its population was 157,346. Bibb County is geographically located in the Central Georgia (Middle Georgia) region, and is the largest county in the Macon metropolitan area (metropolitan statistical area). Bibb County has a consolidated city-county government following a merger of the county with its county seat and largest city, Macon, in 2014. They were later joined in this consolidated government in 2015 by the county's only other municipality, Payne City. History This area was inhabited for thousands of years by successive indigenous peoples. The Ocmulgee National Monument is a national park and historic site incorporating two major mound and town complexes: Lamar Mounds and Village Site and Ocmulgee Mound Site, both located along the Ocmulgee River. They were built by indigenous peoples during the Mississippian culture era. The detailed chronicles of the Hernando de Soto expedition recorded vi ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Fort Myers, Florida
Fort Myers (or Ft. Myers) is a city in southwestern Florida and the county seat and commercial center of Lee County, Florida, United States. The Census Bureau's Population Estimates Program calculated that the city's population was 92,245 in 2021, ranking the city the 370th-most-populous in the country. Together with the larger and more residential city of Cape Coral, the smaller cities of Fort Myers Beach, Sanibel, and Bonita Springs, the village of Estero, and the unincorporated districts of Lehigh Acres and North Fort Myers, it anchors a metropolitan statistical area (MSA) which comprises Lee County and has a population of 787,976 as of 2021. Fort Myers is a gateway to the Southwest Florida region and a major tourist destination within Florida. The winter estates of Thomas Edison ("Seminole Lodge") and Henry Ford ("The Mangoes") are major attractions. The city takes its name from a local former fort that was built during the Seminole Wars. The fort in turn took its name f ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Life Insurance
Life insurance (or life assurance, especially in the Commonwealth of Nations) is a contract between an insurance policy holder and an insurer or assurer, where the insurer promises to pay a designated beneficiary a sum of money upon the death of an insured person (often the policyholder). Depending on the contract, other events such as terminal illness or critical illness can also trigger payment. The policyholder typically pays a premium, either regularly or as one lump sum. The benefits may include other expenses, such as funeral expenses. Life policies are legal contracts and the terms of each contract describe the limitations of the insured events. Often, specific exclusions written into the contract limit the liability of the insurer; common examples include claims relating to suicide, fraud, war, riot, and civil commotion. Difficulties may arise where an event is not clearly defined, for example, the insured knowingly incurred a risk by consenting to an experimental m ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |