Since the reinstatement of capital punishment in the United States

Capital punishment in the United States

Capital punishment in the United States, in practice, applies only for aggravated murder and more rarely for felony murder. Capital punishment was a penalty at common law, for many felonies, and was enforced in all of the American colonies prior to the Declaration of Independence...

 in 1976, three people have been executed in Kentucky

Kentucky

The Commonwealth of Kentucky is a state located in the East Central United States of America. As classified by the United States Census Bureau, Kentucky is a Southern state, more specifically in the East South Central region. Kentucky is one of four U.S. states constituted as a commonwealth...

. All three were executed for murder. Marco Allen Chapman waived his appeals and asked that the execution be carried out.

	Executed person	Date of execution	Method	Victims	Under Governor
1	Harold McQueen, Jr. Harold McQueen, Jr. Harold McQueen, Jr. was the first criminal executed by the State of Kentucky after the reinstatement of capital punishment in the United States in 1976...	1 July 1997	electrocution Electric chair Execution by electrocution, usually performed using an electric chair, is an execution method originating in the United States in which the condemned person is strapped to a specially built wooden chair and electrocuted through electrodes placed on the body...	Rebecca O'Hearn	Paul E. Patton Paul E. Patton Paul Edward Patton was the 59th governor of Kentucky, serving from 1995 to 2003. Because of a 1992 amendment to the Kentucky Constitution, he was the first governor eligible to succeed himself in office since James Garrard in 1800...
2	Edward Lee Harper, Jr.	25 May 1999	lethal injection Lethal injection Lethal injection is the practice of injecting a person with a fatal dose of drugs for the express purpose of causing the immediate death of the subject. The main application for this procedure is capital punishment, but the term may also be applied in a broad sense to euthanasia and suicide...	Alice Harper and Edward Lee Harper, Sr.	Paul E. Patton Paul E. Patton Paul Edward Patton was the 59th governor of Kentucky, serving from 1995 to 2003. Because of a 1992 amendment to the Kentucky Constitution, he was the first governor eligible to succeed himself in office since James Garrard in 1800...
3	Marco Allen Chapman	21 November 2008	lethal injection Lethal injection Lethal injection is the practice of injecting a person with a fatal dose of drugs for the express purpose of causing the immediate death of the subject. The main application for this procedure is capital punishment, but the term may also be applied in a broad sense to euthanasia and suicide...	Chelbi Sharon and Cody Sharon	Steve Beshear Steve Beshear Steven Lynn "Steve" Beshear is an American politician who is the 61st Governor of the Commonwealth of Kentucky. A Democrat, Beshear previously served in the Kentucky House of Representatives from 1974 to 1979, was the state's Attorney General from 1980 to 1983, and was Lieutenant Governor from...

Another execution of note in Kentucky was that of Rainey Bethea

Rainey Bethea

Rainey Bethea was the last person to be publicly executed in the United States. Bethea, who was a black man, confessed to the rape and murder of a 70-year-old white woman named Lischia Edwards, and after being convicted of her rape, he was publicly hanged in Owensboro, Kentucky...

. On 14 August 1936 by hanging

Hanging

Hanging is the lethal suspension of a person by a ligature. The Oxford English Dictionary states that hanging in this sense is "specifically to put to death by suspension by the neck", though it formerly also referred to crucifixion and death by impalement in which the body would remain...

 for the rape of 70-year-old Lischia Edwards. He had confessed to her strangling but the Commonwealth

Commonwealth (United States)

Four of the constituent states of the United States officially designate themselves Commonwealths: Kentucky, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania and Virginia....

 indicted him only on the rape charge since that was the only capital crime for which the penalty was hanging. It was to be the last public hanging in the United States; the execution was witnessed by thousands in downtown Owensboro

Owensboro, Kentucky

Owensboro is the fourth largest city by population in the U.S. state of Kentucky. It is the county seat of Daviess County. It is located on U.S. Route 60 about southeast of Evansville, Indiana, and is the principal city of the Owensboro, Kentucky, Metropolitan Statistical Area. The city's...

.

The first person legally executed by the state of Kentucky was Jereboam O. Beauchamp

Jereboam O. Beauchamp

Jereboam Orville Beauchamp was an American lawyer who murdered the Kentucky legislator Solomon P. Sharp, an event known as the Beauchamp–Sharp Tragedy. In 1821, Sharp was accused of fathering the illegitimate stillborn child of a woman named Anna Cooke. Sharp denied paternity of the child, and...

 in 1826, for the murder of Solomon P. Sharp

Solomon P. Sharp

Solomon Porcius Sharp was attorney general of Kentucky and a member of the United States Congress and the Kentucky General Assembly. His murder at the hands of Jereboam O...

.