NASHVILLE, Tennessee – The state of Tennessee executed Nicholas Todd Sutton by electric chair Thursday evening, ending the life of a man who killed four people, including his own grandmother, but who spent his final decades on death row saving the lives of prison guards and fellow inmates. At 7:18 p.m. Central time, the first jolt of electricity surged through Sutton’s body at the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution. He was pronounced dead at 7:26 p.m. at the age of 58.
The execution, the last in the United States to be carried out by electric chair, concluded a case that defies easy categorization. Sutton was convicted of murdering Carl Isaac Estep, a fellow inmate, in 1985, a crime that earned him a death sentence. But the people who fought hardest to keep him alive were not his family. They were the very correction officers paid to keep him locked up, men and women who testified that Sutton had saved their lives.
“He risked his safety and well-being in order to save me from possible death,” wrote Tony Eden, a correction officer who Sutton rescued during a prison riot in 1985. “I owe my life to Nick Sutton. If Nick Sutton was released tomorrow, I would welcome him into my home and invite him to be my neighbor.” Eden’s statement was one of many submitted to Governor Bill Lee in a clemency petition that argued Sutton had transformed from a lifetaker into a lifesaver.
Sutton’s journey to the electric chair began in Morristown, Tennessee, where he was born on July 15, 1961. His mother abandoned him at birth. His father, mentally ill and alcoholic, introduced him to drugs while he was still a child. By his teenage years, Sutton had dropped out of high school and was fully addicted. Then his father died. The one person who stepped in was his grandmother, Dorothy Virginia Sutton, a retired school teacher who gave him a home, money, and gifts.
In December 1979, Sutton killed her. He knocked her unconscious with a piece of firewood, wrapped her body in a blanket and trash bags, chained her to a cinder block, and threw her into the Nolachucky River. She drowned in the icy water. He was 18 years old. That murder came after two others. In August 1979, Sutton killed his high school friend John Michael Large, 19, with blunt force trauma to the head. A piece of plywood was found in Large’s mouth. His body was buried in a shallow grave.
In September 1979, Sutton killed Charles Pulry Alman III, a 46-year-old contractor from Knoxville. Alman’s gold Jaguar was found abandoned near Newport, Tennessee. His body was never recovered. Sutton confessed to all three murders after his arrest for his grandmother’s death. He received three consecutive life sentences for those killings, sparing him the death penalty. But inside prison, the violence continued.
On January 15, 1985, Sutton and three other inmates went to Estep’s cell at the Morgan County Regional Correctional Facility. They stabbed him 38 times. Estep had allegedly threatened to kill Sutton over a drug dispute, and prison staff had done nothing, according to Sutton’s attorneys. A jury convicted Sutton of first-degree murder and sentenced him to death. He was 25 years old. He would spend the next 34 years on death row.
During those decades, Sutton’s legal team filed appeal after appeal, arguing that his horrific childhood was never properly presented to the jury. A psychologist testified that his father had made his life a living hell. But the courts were not moved enough to reverse the sentence. One by one, the appeals were denied. And through all of this, something unexpected was happening inside the walls of Riverbend Maximum Security Institution.
Sutton started saving lives. In 1985, the same year he was charged with Estep’s murder, a riot broke out at the Tennessee State Prison. Correction officer Tony Eden found himself surrounded by five inmates armed with knives. Sutton stepped in and rescued him. In the 1990s, a female prison manager named Cheryl Donaldson slipped and fell. Sutton rushed to her side, helped her to her feet, and called for staff. He did exactly the opposite of what I feared, she later wrote.
Then there was Paul House, another death row inmate who developed multiple sclerosis and lost the ability to walk. The prison refused him a wheelchair. Sutton carried him every single day to the shower, helped him wash, and carried him to visits with his mother. Paul’s mother told the governor directly, “Nick is the only reason Paul is alive today.” And there was Lee Hall Jr., who went blind during his years of incarceration. Sutton became his guide, walking him through the unit every day.
When Tennessee executed Lee Hall in December 2019, his parents sent Sutton a Christmas card to thank him for everything he had done for their son. Seven current and former Tennessee Department of Correction officials came forward in support of Sutton’s clemency petition. They called him an honest, kind, and trustworthy man who had used his time in prison to better himself. Five of the jurors who had originally sentenced him to death now supported commuting his sentence.
Members of his victim’s own families, including relatives of his grandmother and Charles Alman, asked the governor to spare his life. Charles Alman’s nephew said plainly that executing Sutton would only add violence on top of violence. On January 2020, Sutton’s legal team filed a formal clemency petition with Governor Bill Lee. The petition made a simple argument: the man who was sentenced to death in 1986 no longer existed. He had maintained a clean disciplinary record since 1990.
“Nick Sutton has gone from a lifetaker to a lifesaver,” wrote former federal judge Kevin Sharp, who led Sutton’s legal team. The petition had support from correction officials, jurors, and victims families alike. On February 19, 2020, one day before the scheduled execution, Governor Lee issued his response. “After careful consideration of Nicholas Sutton’s request for clemency and a thorough review of the case, I am upholding the sentence of the state of Tennessee and will not be intervening,” Lee said.
No further explanation was given. No acknowledgement of the officers who had come forward. No comment on the jurors who had changed their minds. The execution would go forward. On the morning of February 20, Sutton was moved to death watch. His spiritual adviser came to see him. Together they shared communion with Welch’s grape juice and a small wafer. Then came his last meal: fried pork chops, mashed potatoes with gravy, and peach pie with vanilla ice cream.
He ate it and then he waited. At just after 7:00 p.m., the witnesses were led in. Through a glass partition, they could see the electric chair. And in it, Nicholas Todd Sutton. When asked if he had any final words, he spoke at length. “I would like to thank my wife for being such a good witness to the Lord and for my family and many friends for their love and support as they tried so very hard to save my life,” he said.
“Don’t ever give up on the power of Jesus Christ to take impossible situations and correct them. He’s fixed me. I’m just grateful to be a servant of God and I’m looking forward to being in his presence.” He said nothing about his victims. He said nothing about Carl Estep or Dorothy Sutton or John Large or Charles Alman. He closed his eyes. At 7:18 p.m., the first bolt of electricity hit his body. Witnesses described his body jerking backward into the chair, his fingers tightening on the armrests.
Then a second bolt. For six minutes, witnesses watched through the glass for any sign of movement. Then the blinds were lowered. Two minutes later, at 7:26 p.m., Nicholas Todd Sutton was declared dead. After the execution, his attorney Steven Ferrell stepped outside and read a longer written statement that Sutton had prepared. “I have made a lot of friends along the way, and a lot of people have enriched my life,” the statement read. “Don’t ever give up on the ability of Jesus Christ to fix someone or any problem.”
“I hope I do a much better job in the next life than I did in this one,” the statement concluded. Outside the prison, Amy Large Cook, whose brother John was killed by Sutton when she was just 11 years old, stated the Tennessee Department of Correction. “John was denied the opportunity to live a full life with a family of his own,” she said. “My children were denied meeting a wonderful man who would have spoiled them rotten and loved them with all his heart.”
“He suffered a terrible and horrific death and for that I will never forgive Mr. Sutton,” she added. She also said she didn’t know if she would ever have full closure. “At least that chapter will be over,” she said, quoting a friend. Nicholas Todd Sutton became on February 20, 2020, the last person in the United States to be executed by electric chair. He spent 34 years on death row. He entered that system as a violent, addicted, deeply troubled 23-year-old.
He left it, by most accounts of people who actually knew him, as a different man entirely. Whether that mattered, whether it should have mattered, is a question that reasonable people have disagreed on ever since. The law said he had to die for what he did to Carl Estep in 1985. The correction officers who stood up for him said the law was about to kill the wrong version of who he was. Both things can be true at once.
What is not up for debate is this: four people are dead because of Nicholas Todd Sutton. Dorothy Sutton, John Large, Charles Alman, Carl Estep. Each of them had people who loved them. Each of them had futures that were taken away. And at least one of them, Amy Large Cook, never found the closure she was looking for, even after the execution was carried out. The state of Tennessee has now closed its case on Nicholas Todd Sutton. The question of what justice truly means, however, remains open.