Nicholas Todd Sutton

In January 2020, Sutton notified prison officials that he chose the electric chair over lethal injection as execution method, a choice allowed by Tennessee law.

In the end, Sutton's death sentence was cemented, as Governor Bill Lee rejected his clemency application a week before the scheduled execution date. This was soon followed by a refusal from the Supreme Court to issue a stay of execution. On February 20, 2020, Sutton was executed via electric chair at the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution. In his final statement, Sutton spoke at length about his faith, love and gratefulness to his family, friends and Jesus Christ. After having his spiritual adviser serve communion, consisting of Welch's grape juice and a wafer, Sutton ate his requested last meal of fried pork chops, mashed potatoes with gravy and peach pie with vanilla ice cream. His last words were "I’m just grateful to be a servant of God." Sutton is the most recent person to be electrocuted in the United States.

After his conviction, Sutton initially served his sentence at the Brushy Mountain State Penitentiary before being transferred to the maximum security Morgan County Correctional Complex in Wartburg. While in prison, he continued using and dealing drugs to fellow inmates, one of whom was 44-year-old Carl Isaac Estep, who was serving a life term for raping a 9-year-old girl in Knoxville. In early January 1985, the two got into a dispute over drugs, with Estep threatening to kill Sutton using a homemade knife. In response, Sutton and three other inmates (23-year-old Charles Arnold Freeman; 33-year-old Thomas Street and 22-year-old David Wesley Stufflestreet) decided to arm themselves with knives and take revenge on Estep. On January 15, the quartet went to Estep's cell and stabbed him 38 times. None were charged until May 20, with Sutton, Freeman and Street being charged with first-degree murder while Stufflestreet was charged as an accessory. In March 1986, the jury found Sutton and Street guilty on the murder charge, sentencing the former to death and the latter to life imprisonment; Freeman and Stufflestreet were each acquitted.

On April 29, 1980, Sutton was arraigned for Large's murder in North Carolina, while authorities back in Tennessee continued to search for Almon's body. On May 14, scuba divers investigating an old rock quarry near Newport uncovered the remains of at least four bodies, one of which was thought to belong to Almon. Like his other victims, it bore what the investigators had termed "Sutton's signature" - it was wrapped up in bags, weighed with cinderblocks and sunk at the bottom of the quarry. The other bodies were determined to be unrelated to the case. Upon hearing of the discovery, Sutton spontaneously confessed to two additional victims: an Alcoa teenager he had apparently killed in July 1978 and buried in North Carolina, and a supposed drug buyer from Atlanta he had also buried on the family farm. As a result of these confessions, the search at the quarry was temporarily called off.

Not long after, police in both North Carolina and Tennessee obtained search warrants to locate the new alleged victims, whose identities Sutton never disclosed. In an effort to locate them, prosecutors offered a plea deal with the convict, sparing the death penalty in exchange for him telling the burial site locations. After numerous failed searches, it was deduced that the "undiscovered victims" were made up by Sutton. In June 1980, he was additionally charged with Almon's murder.

On the day of Christmas 1979, Sutton went to the Morristown Police Department to report his grandma missing. In his statements, he claimed that he had last seen her three days prior in the company of an unknown male. An examination of the family house, however, revealed signs of foul play, most notably blood spots on the carpets, walls and floors. Shortly after, Sutton was detained for questioning, while investigators examined tips in order to locate Mrs. Sutton's body, one of which led them to a property in North Carolina. Upon their return, Sutton said that he had stuffed his grandmother's body in a bag, weighed it down with a cinderblock and then thrown it into the Nolichucky River. After a two-day long search, the 58-year-old's body was found at the bottom of the river, with a forensic autopsy determining that she had been hit in the back of the head with a blunt instrument, but later drowned after being thrown into the river. Sutton was charged with the murder and his bail set at $100,000.

Nicholas Todd Sutton (July 15, 1961 – February 20, 2020) was an American serial killer who was responsible for murdering two acquaintances and his own grandmother in North Carolina and Tennessee from August to December 1979. Convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment for these crimes, Sutton, among three others, later participated in a 1985 prison killing over drugs. For this final crime, he was sentenced to death and executed in 2020 by electric chair. Sutton is the most recent person to be executed in this manner.

Nicholas Todd Sutton was born on July 15, 1961 in Morristown, Tennessee. His mother abandoned him at birth, while his father, a mentally-ill and verbally abusive alcoholic, was constantly detained in either mental institutions or various jails. As he grew up, Sutton was taught to use drugs by his father, leading to a drug addiction that would last up until his incarceration.