| Name | Sentence start | Sentence end | Sentence duration | Country | Description |
|---|
| Paul Geidel Jr. | 1911 | 1980 | 68 years, 245 days |  | Sentenced to 20 years to life and incarcerated from 1911, aged 17, for robbery and murder. He was nearing parole for good behavior, but was then found insane in 1926 and transferred to Dannemora State Hospital for the Criminally Insane, where he was confined until 1976. He was finally released in 1980 at 86. He died in a nursing home in 1987, aged 93. |
| John Phillips | July 17, 1952 | March 9, 2021 | 68 years, 236 days | | Convicted for the rape of a five-year-old girl.[7] According to the North Carolina DOC, he was released on March 9, 2021, on parole. His parole ends on March 8, 2026.[8] |
| Walter H. Bourque Jr. | December 11, 1955 | ongoing | | | Longest serving prisoner in New Hampshire. Serving a sentence of 99 years and six months for the axe murder of a four-year-old girl when he was 17.[9] |
| Joseph Ligon | December 18, 1953 | February 11, 2021 | 67 years, 54 days | | The oldest juvenile lifer in the US, Ligon at age 15 was sentenced to life without parole for murder, a mandatory sentence at the time.[10] Ligon first rejected a resentencing and parole offer in 2016.[11] Ligon was again resentenced in 2017 and immediately eligible for parole but refused it, pending his appeal. Ligon contends that he should be resentenced to "time served" and released, so he can cut all ties to the justice system.On February 11, 2021, Ligon was released from prison at the age of 83.[12] He spoke to the BBC World Service about his life in May 2021.[13] |
| Johnson Van Dyke Grigsby | 1908 | 1974 | 66 years, 123 days | | After killing a man in a bar fight, he was sentenced to life in prison for murder and was denied parole 69 times before he was released at age 89. Returned to prison voluntarily, citing difficulty finding a job, but left again in 1976. Died in 1987, aged 101.[14] |
| Sammie Robinson | September 26, 1953 | December 20, 2019 | 66 years, 85 days | | Spent 66 years in prison in Louisiana, beginning when he was 17 and ending with his death at 83.[15] |
| Warren Nutter | February 2, 1956 | December 8, 2021 | 65 years, 10 months, 6 days | | Youngest man ever sentenced to death in Iowa, when he was 18 years old, for the murder of a patrolman during a gas station robbery.[16] Sentence commuted to life in prison in 1957.[17] He died in the hospice room of the Iowa State Penitentiary in December 2021, aged 84.[18] |
| William Heirens | 1946 | 2012 | 65 years, 181 days | | Known as the "Lipstick Killer". Reputed to be the longest surviving prisoner in Chicago. Died in prison. |
| Kenneth Nicely | December 23, 1958 | ongoing | | | Longest serving inmate in Arkansas. Convicted of killing a police officer.[19] |
| Clarence Marshall | 1950 | 2015 | 64 years, 70 days | | Longest-serving prisoner in Michigan. Sentenced to life in prison on one count of armed robbery and another of unarmed assault "with intent to rob and steal". He was paroled in 2015.[20] [21] |
| Richard Honeck | 1899 | 1963 | 64 years, 44 days | | Aged 20, Honeck was sentenced to life in prison for the murder of a former school friend. He was paroled after 63 years and one month. He died in 1976, aged 97. |
| Howard Christensen | 1937 | 2001 | 64 years | | Sentenced to life without parole for the murder of a teacher in 1937, when he was 16, along with a 17-year-old accomplice who hanged himself in prison in 1943. His sentence was commuted to 200 years in the mid-1970s. He was paroled in 2001 and died in 2003, aged 82.[22] |
| Charles Edret Ford | 1952 | 2016 | 64 years | | Longest serving prisoner in Maryland. Ford, a black man, was convicted of murder by an all-white jury in 1952, when he was 19. He was granted retrial in 2015, citing an unconstitutional trial and continued ineffective assistance of counsel who failed to inform him of his right to appeal. He was released to a nursing home.[23] |
| Oliver Terpening | 1947 | 2010 | 63 years, 125 days | | When he was 16, Terpening shot a 14-year-old school friend and the boy's three sisters, aged 16, 12, and 2. Prosecutors theorized that Terpening wanted to rape the oldest and that he killed the others when they surprised him, while Terpening claimed that he only wanted to know how it felt to kill somebody, and that he had found the experience disappointing. Died in prison.[24] |
| "Old Bill" Wallace | 1926 | 1989 | 63 years |  | Imprisoned for shooting a man in an argument over a cigarette in a Melbourne cafe. Died a month before his 108th birthday, still in prison, incarcerated in J Ward. Listed in Guinness World Records as the oldest prisoner in world history.[25] |
| Hugh Alderman | 1917 | 1980 | 62 years, 192 days | | Longest serving prisoner in Florida. Escaped twice in 1919 and 1924. Moved to a mental hospital in 1927, where he died in 1980, aged 86.[26] |
| Michael Anthony Mayola | November 15, 1962 | ongoing | | | Longest serving prisoner in Alabama. Sentenced to life imprisonment for the kidnapping and murder of an 11-year-old boy, and was last denied parole in 2021.[27] |
| James R. Moore | December 7, 1963 | April 30, 2024 | 60 years | | Pled guilty to the rape and murder of a 14-year-old girl to avoid the death penalty and was sentenced to "natural life." Also pleaded confessed to the sexual assault of dozens of other young girls.[28] [29] Last parole application rejected in 2019.[30] He was granted parole in May 2022 and was scheduled to be released on or around June 6, 2022.[31] However, as he was unable to provide a suitable residence upon his release, Moore was never paroled. He died in prison in 2024.[32] |
| Booker T. Hillery | November 1, 1962[33] [34] [35] | January 16, 2023 | | | Longest served prisoner in California history. Accused of stabbing and killing fifteen-year-old Marlene Miller with scissors in the small town of Hanford. Originally sentenced to death for murder but changed to life in prison in the 1970s. Appealed, was retried and found guilty again in 1986. Died in prison at the age of 91.[36] |
| Howard Unruh | September 6, 1949 | October 19, 2009 | 60 years, 43 days | | Mass murderer who killed 13 people and injured three in Camden, New Jersey. Recluded in a mental hospital without trial or conviction until he died aged 88. |
| Clifford Hampton | 1959 | 2019 | 60 years | | Longest serving juvenile lifer in Louisiana. Resentenced due to Montgomery v. Louisiana and paroled in April 2019.[37] | |
| Name | Sentence start | Sentence end | Sentence duration | Country | Description |
|---|
| Raymond L. Shuman | June 13, 1958 | February 3, 2018 | 59 years, 7 months, 20 days | | Longest serving prisoner in Nevada. Jailed for the robbery and murder of two men while he and his partner (who was the one that pulled the trigger) were AWOL from the US Navy. Set another prisoner on fire in 1973 due to a dispute about leaving a window open. Died in 2018.[38] |
| Robert Brim (AKA Robert Mertz) | 1958 | January 7, 2018 | 59 years, 2 months | | Killed a pregnant woman and her 3-year-old daughter, and wounded her 4-year-old son, during a shooting spree in South Dakota. Jurors convicted Brim of manslaughter since they did not want him to be executed.[39] [40] He died in prison.[41] |
| Larry Ranes | October 23, 1964 | November 12, 2023 | | | Serial killer sentenced to life without parole for the murder of Gary Smock. He was also the brother of fellow serial killer Danny Ranes. He died on November 12, 2023. |
| Harvey Stewart | 1951 | 1957 | 59 years | | Longest-serving prisoner in Texas at the time of his third parole in 2011. He was convicted the first and third time for robbery, and the second time for murder.[42] [43] |
| 1958 | 1984 |
| 1986 | 2011 |
| Hans-Georg Neumann | 1963 | 2022 | 59 years |
 | Abducted and shot a young couple at a lovers' lane. Longest serving prisoner in Germany and European Union. On March 17, 2021, the Oberlandesgericht Karlsruhe ordered his release on parole at an undisclosed future date, with preparations for reintegration to begin immediately.[44] Neumann was paroled in 2021, and died in 2022.[45] |
| Chester Weger | April 4, 1961 | February 21, 2020 | | | Convicted for the murder of a woman in Starved Rock State Park in 1960. Granted parole November 21, 2019, though he was not released until February 21, 2020.[46] |
| Terry Caspersen | September 17, 1964 | May 23, 2023 | | | Longest-serving inmate in Wisconsin. Sentenced in 1964 for the stabbing of an 18-year-old woman who survived the initial attack but died of her injuries two days later. He was up for parole in July 2021 but was denied.[47] [48] Caspersen died in May 2023.[49] |
| Jesse Pomeroy | December 1874 | September 29, 1932 | 57 years, 9 months | | Teenage serial killer nicknamed "The Boy Fiend", who tortured nine younger children and killed two in Boston, Massachusetts. Sentenced to death when he was 15 years old, this was changed to life in solitary confinement after two consecutive governors refused to sign his death warrant. The solitary confinement was lifted in 1917, and he died in 1932, still in prison. |
| Henry Montgomery | February 1964 | November 17, 2021 | | | Shot and killed a police officer in East Baton Rouge, Louisiana at the age of 17. He was sentenced to death but in 1966, the Louisiana Supreme Court annulled the verdict after finding he had not received a fair trial due to public prejudice. In 1969, he was again convicted of murder, which triggered an automatic sentence of life without parole. In 2016, his life sentence was vacated and he was remanded for resentencing. He was denied parole twice but was finally granted parole and released on November 17, 2021.[50] [51] [52] |
| Lester Pearson | 1964 | October 2021 | 57 years | | Convicted of murder in Louisiana and sentenced to life in prison with chance of parole after 10 years and 6 months due to a guilty plea agreement, however Louisiana banned parole for all defendants who plead guilty to serious crimes before 1973 due to changes in state laws which prevented him from getting a chance of parole until he was resentenced and released in October 2021.[53] [54] [55] [56] |
| Wyman Hall | 1897 | 1954 | 57 years | | Hall was jailed in 1897 for the murder of a constable. He was paroled in 1954 at the age of 81 and was, at the time, the longest serving inmate in Illinois as well as the oldest.[57] |
| James Earl Hinton | January 26, 1967 | ongoing | | | Hinton is serving life without parole for the 1966 stabbing death of Pickens County, Alabama cab driver Zach Rufus Collins. Initially, Hinton was sentenced to death, but the Alabama Supreme Court ordered a new trial. |
| Mehmet VI | 1861 | 1918 | 56 years | | Kept in the Seraglio and the Kafes from his birth to his accession to the throne, aged 56. He was both the last Ottoman prince to be ritually imprisoned by his family and the one who was imprisoned for the longest time. |
| Joe Carr | 1941 | 1997 | 56 years | | Longest-serving prisoner in Kansas. Convicted of murder for strangling a newborn and tossing his body in the Arkansas river. Carr refused to apply for parole until he was released, aged 79.[58] |
| Sheldry Topp | 1963 | February 2019 | 56 years | | Oldest juvenile lifer in Michigan. He was originally sentenced to life without parole for a murder he committed at age 17 in 1962 but his sentence was later lowered to 40 to 60 years due to Montgomery v. Louisiana because of his age at the time of the crime. He was also given 10 years' worth of good behavior credits which allowed him to be released in February 2019 without having to go through a parole hearing.[59] [60] |
| George Yutaka Shimabuku | 1964 | 2020 | 56 years | | Shimabuku was convicted of three killings, including one in prison. He was transferred to Arizona from Hawaii and died in December 2020 due to complications from COVID-19.[61] |
| Michael Herrington | July 8, 1967 | ongoing | | | Second longest-serving inmate in Wisconsin. Sentenced in 1967 for two counts of first-degree murder and one count of attempted first-degree murder.[62] |
| Edward Albert Seibold | September 20, 1967 | ongoing | | | Seibold is serving multiple life sentences for the slayings of three girls and the injury of a mother in Lee County, Alabama in 1967. |
| Robert Mone | January 23, 1968 | ongoing | | | In 1967 he shot a teacher at his old school, and in 1976 he and another man escaped from the State Hospital, Carstairs, killing three people in the process.[63] |
| Emmett James Paramore | 1968 | ongoing | | | As part of a group who attempted to steal goods from a delivery van, he shot and killed a bakery truck salesman.[64] [65] |
| Thomas Fuller | 1968 | ongoing | | | Shot and killed five children in Coles County, Illinois.[66] [67] |
| William Holly Griffith | 1915 | 1971 | 55 years, 359 days | | Longest serving prisoner in West Virginia, known as "the bestial killer" and the "leading bad man" in the state. Sentenced to life for murdering the police chief[68] who was going to arrest him and a constable[69] during his escape to Ohio, where he was arrested. Tried to flee prison several times, the last one when he was already suffering from cancer. Died in prison. |
| Antonio "Tony" Wheat | November 1, 1965 | November 11, 2020 | 55 years, 10 days | | The longest serving prisoner in Washington state, a U.S. Air Force airman originally sentenced to death for the murders of three gas station attendants during an armed robbery spree with another colleague. His sentence was stayed four days before his scheduled execution on July 11, 1969, then changed to three life sentences after a retrial in 1971. Paroled.[70] |
| Diego de Castilla | 1379 | 1434 | 55 years | | Illegitimate son of King Peter I of Castile, imprisoned in Curiel Castle by his uncle Henry II when he was 14 years old, and released by his uncle's great-grandson, John II. Died in 1440.[71] |
| András Toma | 1945 | 2000 | 55 years |
 | Believed to be the last POW of World War II. Toma, a Hungarian soldier, was captured in southern Poland in 1945 and later interned in a mental hospital of rural Kotelnich, in Russia. His documents were lost, and he was listed as KIA by the Hungarian Army. He was returned to Hungary after a Czech linguist realized that he spoke an eastern dialect of the Hungarian language. Died in 2004, aged 79. |
| John Straffen | 1952 | 2007 | 55 years | | Multiple child killer. Sentenced to death for his third murder, which took place after he escaped from a mental hospital; the sentence was commuted to life in prison. Longest-serving prisoner in the United Kingdom at the time of his death. |
| Frank Edward Wetzel[72] | 1957 | 2012 | 55 years | | Sentenced to two life sentences for the murders of two highway patrolmen when he was driving to Mississippi to break his brother out of death row. His brother was executed two months later. Wetzel maintained his innocence[73] and died of Alzheimer's disease when he was 90 years old, still in prison.[74] |
| Allen Smith | c. December 1953 | September 7, 2009 | c. 55 years | | A former reform schooler who shot an elderly couple during a robbery north of Newberry, Michigan some days before his 17th birthday. His sentence was commuted for medical reasons in August 2009, only 12 days before his death. He died before he could be released. |
| Clarence Shepherd | 1965 | 2020 | 55 years | | Shepherd was serving life without parole for separate murders, including the 1965 stabbing and strangulation of a Birmingham woman. He died in prison at the age of 80 due to Covid-19.[75] [76] |
| John Mikulovsky | June 15, 1968 | ongoing | | | Murdered his parents in December 1967.[77] |
| John David Smith | July 12, 1968 | ongoing | | | Convicted of the murder of William Straight [78] |
| Clyde Johnson | 1969 | ongoing | | | Fatally shot a man at a party after a night of drinking in 1968. At a commutation hearing in 2021, Johnson alleged that the victim man had called him a racial slur and reached for a gun.[79] |
| Sirhan Sirhan | 1969 | ongoing | | | Palestinian with Jordanian citizenship who assassinated Robert F. Kennedy. Originally sentenced to death, but his sentence was commuted in 1971 to life in prison. Parole has been denied 15 times. On August 27, 2021, Sirhan was recommended parole by a California parole board. Prosecutors declined to participate or to oppose his release under a policy by Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón.[80] On January 13, 2022, California governor Gavin Newsom reversed the decision, stating that Sirhan had "not developed the accountability and insight required to support his safe release" and refused to accept responsibility for his crime.[81] |
| Earl Perry | June 11, 1943 | March 23, 1998 | 54 years, 9 months, and 12 days | | Convicted of the April 1943 rape and strangulation of Theresa "Chi-Chi" Williams, age 4. Perry, who was 17 when he committed the murder, was sentenced to life in prison on June 11, 1943.[82] He was denied parole in 1958,[83] 1963,[84] 1968[85] and 1974.[86] Died in prison on March 23, 1998.[87] |
| Garold Rheinschmidt | 1960 | May 1, 2015 | 54 years, 8 months, 12 days | | Longest serving prisoner in Wisconsin at the time of his death.[88] |
| Verdell Miles | April 27, 1967 | December 14, 2021 | | | Inmate in Wisconsin who was sentenced in 1967. Paroled on December 14, 2021.[89] |
| Richard Robles | December 1, 1965 | May 21, 2020 | 54 years, 5 months, 21 days | | Perpetrator of the Career Girls Murders. He was paroled in May 2020 as per the New York Department of Corrections.[90] |
| Tony Rawlins | December 28, 1955 | April 17, 2010 | 54 years, 3 months, 20 days | | Convicted of the "Kissing Point mutilation murder", strangling a 12-year-old girl who rejected his advances. Was Australia's longest serving prisoner when he died, with 18 parole applications being rejected.[91] |
| Willie Gaines Smith | 1960 | 2014 | 54 years, 105 days | | Longest serving prisoner in Kentucky. Rejected parole because no nursing home accepted him and he would receive better medical care in prison but was released on medical parole in 2014. Died at the age of 76 in December 2014.[92] |
| Louis Mitchell | 1967 | October 5, 2021 | 54 years | | Imprisoned for raping a white woman, a crime which Mitchell said he did not do and has always maintained his innocence about. Sentenced to life in prison and resentenced and released on October 5, 2021[93] [94] |
| Machal Lalung | 1951 | 2005 | 54 years |  | Originally arrested for "causing grievous harm," Lalung was interned in a psychiatric hospital until he was declared "fully fit" in 1967. However, he was mistakenly transferred to prison rather than released, and forgotten about until 2005. He was released without ever being tried or convicted, aged 77.[95] |
| Robert Stroud | 1909 | 1963 | 54 years | | Known as "the Birdman of Alcatraz" for the research on bird diseases that he conducted alone in his cell, although he actually did it at Leavenworth Penitentiary before he was moved to the federal prison in Alcatraz Island. |
| Jerry Lee Hansen | May 20, 1965 | May 11, 2019 | 53 years, 11 months, 21 days | | Longest serving prisoner in Nebraska. Jailed for the murder of his parents in law and the attempted murder of his then wife. Disarmed a corrections officer and shot his ex-wife a second time in 1973, paralyzing her for which he received two 20 years to life sentences, he had been eligible for parole since 1977 and had been turned down, time after time. Committed suicide at the age of 82 while in the Tecumseh State Correctional Institution.[96] [97] [98] |
| Michael Wilber Wade | October 28, 1966 | September 2, 2020 | 53 years, 10 months, 5 days | | When he was 19, he killed a 16-year-old girl he had met that day. The death penalty was a common sentence for murder in Florida at the time, but the jury spared him.[99] Died in prison.[100] [101] |
| George Nassar | June 26, 1965 | December 3, 2018 | 53 years, 5 months, 7 days | | Convicted of two murders, he was originally sentenced to death in 1965, but in 1966 his sentence was struck down and replaced with life imprisonment. Also known for being the person to whom Albert DeSalvo allegedly confessed to being the Boston Strangler in late 1965. |
| Edward Arthur Webb | October 22, 1963 | January 19, 2017 | 53 years, 89 days | | Beat a woman to death with an axe, he died in prison.[102] |
| Harry Hebard | October 4, 1968 | December 24, 2021 | | | Murdered five of his relatives, including three children, in 1963.[103] Died in prison. |
| Giulio d'Este | 1506 | 1559 | 53 years | Ferrara | Illegitimate son of Ercole I d'Este, duke of Ferrara. Organized a failed plot aimed at eliminating his half-brothers duke Alfonso I d'Este and cardinal Ippolito d'Este. Sentenced to death, his penalty was commuted to life imprisonment. Freed by his grandnephew Alfonso II d'Este in 1559 at the age of 81. |
| Norman Santiago | 1969 | ongoing | 53 years | | Serving life without parole for the murder of a police officer in Hawaii.[104] [105] |
| Bobby Beausoleil | April 18, 1970 | ongoing | | | Member of the Manson Family originally sentenced to death for the murder of Manson's former associate Gary Hinman in 1969. The Family perpetrated the 10050 Cielo Drive and Tate-LaBianca murders in a failed attempt to make police believe that Beausoleil was wrongfully accused. He was recommended for parole in January 2019, but was denied by the Governor of California. |
| John Norman Collins | August 19, 1970 | ongoing | | | Suspected serial abductor, rapist, and murderer of seven women in the Ann Arbor-Ypsilanti area during the late 1960s, though only convicted of one murder. |
| Patricia Krenwinkel | April 28, 1971 | ongoing | | | Member of Manson family; longest serving female prisoner in US penal history. |
| Peter Woodcock | 1957 | 2010 | 52 years, 328 days |  | Declared not guilty by reason of insanity and recluded in a mental hospital for the murder of three young children. Murdered a fellow patient in 1991. Died in 2010, still interned. |
| Alfred "Alf" Vincent | 1968 | February 18, 2021 | 52 years |  | Man held in preventive prison for the longest time in the world: sentence was imposed for assaulting five boys. Suspected of having molested between 200 and 500 children.[106] He was held in Rimutaka Prison's high dependency unit due to suffering from dementia and a heart condition.[107] He was released in February 2021.[108] |
| Jerry Lee Duffey | September 1970 | ongoing | 52 years | | Originally sentenced to 1,000 years in prison for robbing and raping a pregnant woman.[109] [110] His sentence was reduced to two life terms on appeal.[111] |
| Arthur Duncan | 1970 | ongoing | 52 years | | Convicted of murder and rape when he was 18 in 1970. Duncan featured in a 2014 news report about his human rights potentially being breached.[112] |
| Daniel Wheeler | March 1971 | ongoing | 52 years | | Sentenced to life without parole for murdering his 16-year-old pregnant ex girlfriend in 1970 when he was 17.[113] [114] |
| William MacDonald | May 1963 | May 12, 2015 | 52 years | | English-born serial killer known as "the Sydney Mutilator." Oldest and longest serving prisoner in New South Wales at the time of his death. |
| Jimmy Ennis | November 9, 1964 | 2016 | 52 years |  | Longest held prisoner in Ireland. Sentenced to life in prison for fatally bludgeoning a farmer in County Cork following a dispute. He had just finished a prison term for attacking a woman with a hatchet.[115] He refused to apply for release until he was freed in 2016, aged 87.[116] |
| James Albert Findley | February 1971 | ongoing | 52 years | | Convicted in 1971 of the murder of a 16 year old, Findley was originally sentenced to death. In 1972, his sentence was commuted to life imprisonment when the US Supreme Court invalidated the death penalty. He is eligible for parole, with his next hearing in June 2028.[117] [118] [119] |
| Winston Moseley | July 7, 1964 | March 28, 2016 | 51 years, 291 days | | Murderer of Kitty Genovese. Died in prison.[120] |
| Tex Watson | October 21, 1971 | ongoing | | | Second in command of the Manson Family and leader in the Cielo Drive and Tate-LaBianca murders. |
| William Jones | October 28, 1971 | ongoing | | | Convicted of first degree murder in Hempstead County, Arkansas.[121] |
| Carlos Eduardo Robledo Puch | 1972 | ongoing | |  | Serial killer. Longest serving prisoner in South America. |
| Bruce M. Davis | April 21, 1972 | ongoing | | | Member of the Manson Family involved in the murders of Hinman and Donald Shea. He was recommended for parole in 2010, 2012, 2014, and 2017; every time the sitting Governor ordered a review or reversed the decision. |
| Julia Belle Rollins | August 02, 1972 | ongoing | | | Convicted of murder for shooting a 24-year-old woman in a bar.[122] |
| Ian Brady | 1966 | 2017 | 51 years, 10 days | | Perpetrator of the Moors murders together with his girlfriend, Myra Hindley, who died in prison in 2002. Longest serving prisoner in the United Kingdom at the time of his death. |
| Walter B. Kelbach | 1967 | 2018 | 51 years | | Spree killer who murdered five people and raped two women in Utah in December 1966 with his cousin Myron Lance. Kelbach died in August 2018 of natural causes.[123] |
| Alfred Tai | 1963 | 2014 | 51 years | | Longest serving prisoner in Hawaii. Paroled at the age of 72.[124] |
| Theo H. | 1960 | 2011 | 51 years |  | Involuntarily committed when he was 17 after a sex offense in which the victim was a minor. He relapsed twice while on leave, in 1967 and in 1985. Died in 2018.[125] |
| Sam Glass | 1967 | 2018 | 51 years | | He was ordered to be detained indefinitely in 1967 after he indecently assaulted, stabbed and strangled a five-year-old girl.[126] |
| David Brault | 1969 | July 13, 2020 | 51 years | | Was convicted in 1969 of the shooting deaths of two men, as well as two sexual assaults and several other offences.[127] |
| Willie Ingram | 1970 | 2021 | 51 years | | Convicted of armed robbery and aggravated rape in 1970, he spent 51 years in prison in Louisiana, before being released in 2021.[128] |
| Carl Macedonio | June 12, 1972 | April 25, 2023 | 50 years, 10 months, 13 days | | Raped and murdered an 18 year old woman in New York in 1971. He was sentenced in 1972 to 33 years to life, and was paroled in April 2023.[129] |
| Edmund Kemper | November 8, 1973 | ongoing | | | Serial killer convicted of murdering eight women, including his mother. He was previously institutionalized as a juvenile for murdering his grandparents. |
| John Weber | 1926 | 1976 | 50 years | | Originally an immigrant from Austria-Hungary, Weber was sentenced to life in prison without parole for the fatal shooting of his 18-month old daughter, which he served in Columbus' Ohio Penitentiary. In 1972, Governor John J. Gilligan commuted his sentence to murder in the second degree. This made him eligible for parole, but he never benefited from it. Was the oldest prisoner in the United States at the time of his death, only a few months from his 100th birthday.[130] [131] |
| Hugo Pinell | 1965 | August 12, 2015[132] | 50 years | | Nicaraguan national sentenced to life in prison for rape. See below.August 12, 2015 |
| John Franzese | March 1967 | June 23, 2017 | 50 years | | Italian-American mobster of the Colombo crime family who was sentenced to 50 years in prison for masterminding several bank robberies. He broke parole and was returned to jail six times, the last time when he was 92 years old.[133] At the time of his release at the age of 100, he was the oldest federal prisoner in the United States and the only centenarian ever. |
| Bobby Gene Griffin | May 27, 1968 | June 6, 2018 | 50 years | | Juvenile lifer in the state of Michigan who at the age of 16 along with three other male teens forced their way into Minnie Peapples’ Benton Harbor home seeking money. Griffin beat, stabbed and sexually assaulted Peapples, who bled to death after the teens fled for which Griffin was sentenced to life without parole until he was resentenced on July 10, 2017, to 40 to 60 years and he was paroled on June 6, 2018.[134] |
| James Ferguson | 1969 | 2019 | 50 years | | Serial child rapist who was detained in Carstairs State Hospital for fifty years.[135] |
| Wayne Coleman | January 24, 1974 | ongoing | | | Sentenced to several terms of life without parole for his role in The Alday Murders.[136] [137] [138] [139] |
| Gloria Williams | 1971 | January 25, 2022 | 50 years | | Williams and several others robbed a grocery store with a toy gun and, after a struggle with the store owner, who was armed, someone in her group shot the owner with his own gun.[140] Williams was paroled in January 2022.[141] |
|
| Name | Sentence start | Sentence end | Sentence duration | Country | Description |
|---|
| George Williams | July 1970 | June 24, 2020 | 49 years, 11 months |  | Arrested and charged with murder when he was 20 years old, never saw trial because he was found mentally unfit to plead. Released after all charges were dropped.[142] [143] |
| Albert Pedersen | November 15, 1971 | September 9, 2021 | 49 years, 9 months | | Convicted of murdering a young mother and her in-laws in Staten Island, New York. He died at Mohawk Correctional Center on September 9, 2021. Parole was repeatedly denied, most recently in 2020.[144] [145] [146] [147] |
| Robert Cook | 1971 | November 2, 2020 | | | Sentenced to life without parole for the December 29, 1969, murder of 24-year old Lloyd Tanner in Pontiac, Michigan which he committed at the age of 17. In 1971 Cook was found guilty of murder despite insisting repeatedly that he killed Lloyd in self-defense. Resentenced on October 30, 2020, to 40 to 60 years in prison and paroled on November 2.[148] [149] |
| Heinrich Pommerenke | June 10, 1959 | December 27, 2008 | 49 years, six months, 17 days | , Germany | Serial killer known as "the Monster of the Black Forest." Was Germany's longest serving prisoner when he died. |
| Søren Mathiasen | 1876 | 1925 | 49 years, 180 days | | Farmer sentenced to life of hard labor in Horsens State Prison for killing the moneylender he was indebted to. Paroled. |
| John Sam Hall | 1967 | February 2, 2016 | 49 years | | Juvenile lifer in the state of Michigan who at the age of 17 robbed and murdered a 73-year-old man for which he was sentenced to life without parole, However, due to Miller v. Alabama in 2012 and then Montgomery v. Louisiana in 2016. he was resentenced to 25 to 60 years and released in 2016.[150] [151] [152] |
| Betty Smithey | 1963 | 2012 | 49 years | | Longest serving female prisoner in the United States at the time of her parole. She was originally sentenced to life without parole for a murder in Arizona. |
| "Crazy Jimmie" Williams | 1948 | 1998 | 49 years | | Longest serving prisoner in Arizona at the time of his death, aged 66.[153] |
| Dennis Michael Creamer | 1968 | 2017 | 49 years | | Juvenile lifer in the state of Florida who at the age of 17 in 1968 shot a man in the head as he slept in his car.[154] He was re-sentenced to 56 years and, as he had served 49 years and had time taken off for good behaviour, was released immediately. |
| Herbert Mullin | August 19, 1973 | August 18, 2022 | 48 years, 11 months, 30 days | | Serial killer who claimed to have murdered 13 people as human sacrifices to prevent earthquakes in California. Died in hospital of natural causes.[155] |
| Albert Paul | March 20, 1972 | March 15, 2021 | 48 years, 11 months, 23 days | | Sentenced to life for murder and Maine's longest serving prisoner.[156] [157] Paul died in March 2021.[158] |
| Melvin Thomas Mott | March 5, 1965 | February 19, 2014 | 48 years, 11 months, 14 days | | Originally sentenced to two and a half years for child sex offences and escaping from custody, he was convicted of the 1964 murder of a 13-year-old girl in 1968 and sentenced to life imprisonment. Longest serving prisoner in Queensland when he died, having had 14 parole applications rejected.[159] |
| John Joseph Kenny | June 18, 1974 | ongoing | | | Bludgeoned an elderly woman with a candlestick during a break-in, when he was 19 years old. He has been allowed outside prison several times and returned every single one after breaching the terms of his release.[160] |
| Elmer Wayne Henley | July 16, 1974 | ongoing | | | Accomplice of serial killer Dean Corll in the Houston Mass Murders, found guilty of committing seven of them. The crimes were discovered when Henley shot Corll in self defence. |
| Earl David Inge | April 1975 | ongoing | | | Inge had tried to break into a home but was chased off, one of the occupants identifying him as the would be burglar. Two weeks later he returned to the house and shot through a window, killing a man.[161] [162] Inge was up for parole in 2020 but was denied.[163] [164] [165] He was last denied parole in 2023.[166] |
| John McHugh | May 1975 | ongoing | | | Jailed for the violent murder of a waiter.[167] |
| Danny Arthur Ranes | September 8, 1973 | January 29, 2022 | | | Serial killer serving life without parole for the murders of four women. He is also the brother of fellow serial killer Larry Ranes.[168] Danny Ranes died in January 2022.[169] |
| Staf Van Eyken | 1974 | ongoing | 48 years |  | Convicted for 3 murders.[170] [171] |
| Paul Coy Craft | December 2, 1975 | May 30, 2024 | | | [172] |
| Harvey Carignan | 1975 | March 2023 | 48 years | | American serial killer who committed crimes in three different states. He was captured in 1974 and sentenced in 1975, remaining in prison until his death in 2023, aged 95. |
| Charles Dennis Easly | April 8, 1975 | June 25, 2023 | | | Convicted of the murder of two girls in Grayson County, Texas in September 1969 and April 1970.[173] [174] |
| Joe Remiro | June 27, 1975 | ongoing | | | Last remaining incarcerated member of the Symbionese Liberation Army, serving a life sentence for one murder. |
| Harry Roberts | November 15, 1966 | November 11, 2014 | | | Convicted of the murder of three policemen in Shepherd's Bush, London. Evaded police for 96 days before being arrested. |
| Patrick David Mackay | November 1975 | ongoing | | | British serial killer who confessed to murdering 11 people in London and Kent in England, from 1974 to 1975. Mackay is currently considered for release after reportedly spending time in an open prison. However, in June 2020, the hearing of the Parole Board was postponed amidst a fresh investigation into Mackay's involvement in unsolved murders. |
| Richard Palumbo | October 25, 1972 | April 19, 2020 | | | Convicted of a June 26, 1971, First Degree murder, Unarmed Robbery and Breaking & Entering a Building With Intent. Died in prison on April 19, 2020, at age 71.[175] [176] [177] |
| William Pierce Jr. | February 1973 | May 2020 | | | Robber turned serial killer who murdered nine people in South Carolina after being paroled in 1970. He died in prison in May 2020.[178] |
| James Ryan O'Neill | 1975 | ongoing | 47 years | | Australian convicted murderer and suspected serial killer, currently serving a life sentence in Tasmania for a murder he committed in February 1975. Allegations have been made that O'Neill also murdered a number of other children in several Australian states from the mid-1960s whilst he was still a teenager through to the murder that he was imprisoned for in 1975. He is currently Tasmania's longest-serving prisoner for a single offence. |
| Sundiata Acoli | 1974 | May 25, 2022 | 47 years | | Former Black Panther Party finance minister and Black Liberation Army member sentenced to life plus 30 years for the murder of a State Trooper during a shootout at the New Jersey Turnpike. He was accompanied by Zayd Shakur, who was killed in the shooting, and Assata Shakur who was also imprisoned for the murder but escaped in 1979 and was granted political asylum in Cuba. He was granted parole in May 2022.[179] |
| David Bennett | 1974 | March 16, 2021 | 47 years | | Juvenile lifer in Michigan who at age 17 stabbed a woman to death in 1972. He was convicted of first degree murder and was sentenced to life without parole.[180] However on March 8, 2021, he was resentenced to 40 to 110 years and was released eight days later.[181] [182] |
| Edward Schwartz | November 2, 1973 | October 8, 2020 | | | Sentenced to life in prison for aggravated assault, non-capital murder, overcoming resistance, possessing a weapon or imitation, and public mischief and robbery.[183] [184] |
| Bobby Sneed | April 24, 1975 | January 7, 2022 | | | Sentenced to life in prison for his role as a lookout in the June 13, 1974, robbery and murder of Curtis E. Jones. Jones was released from prison.[185] [186] [187] [188] |
| John Shaw | September 26, 1976 | ongoing | | | English national who, aged 29, abducted, raped, tortured and murdered two Irish women, Elizabeth Plunkett (22) in Wicklow and Mary Duffy (24) in Mayo. His accomplice Geoffrey Evans was imprisoned from 1976 until his death in 2012.[189] [190] |
| Charles Manson | April 22, 1971 | November 19, 2017 | 46 years, 6 months, 27 days | | Leader of the Manson Family. |
| Pietro Acciarito | May 29, 1897[191] | December 4, 1943 | 46 years, 6 months, 5 days | | Attempted assassin of Umberto I of Italy. Sentence spent entirely in solitary confinement. |
| Ernest DesRoches | June 14, 1974 | November 13, 2020 | 46 years, 4 months, 29 days | | Was convicted of the murders of his neighbours in 1974.[192] He received additional sentences over the years, including for taking a pair of correctional officers hostage.[193] He was denied parole in 2011 and 2013[194] and he died on November 13, 2020, after a short illness.[195] |
| William H Matthews | February 4, 1977 | ongoing | | | Convicted in New Jersey of raping and murdering a 20-year-old college student a month before she was due to be married.[196] |
| Rudolf Hess | May 10, 1941 | August 17, 1987 | 46 years, 3 months, 7 days |
| Deputy Führer of Nazi Germany who flew solo to Scotland to negotiate a peace treaty but was instead taken prisoner. He was later tried for "crimes against peace" and sentenced to life in prison, which he served in Spandau. Committed suicide at the age of 93. He was the last prisoner of Spandau prison, and after his suicide, it was demolished and rebuilt as a shopping centre for British forces. |
| Juan Corona | January 18, 1973 | March 4, 2019 | 46 years, 1 month, 14 days | | Mexican serial killer nicknamed "the Machete Murderer", who killed 25 itinerant workers and buried them in fruit orchards of northern California. Died in prison. |
| Richard Tobias Delage | April 18, 1977 | ongoing | | | Convicted of the murders of two university students committed in 1960 and 1969, respectively, he remains a suspect in a similar double murder in Pennsylvania for which he was never charged.[197] |
| Joanna I of Castile | 1509 | 1555 | 46 years |
Spain | Recluded in a nunnery of Tordesillas until her death, following orders of her father Ferdinand II of Aragon. |
| Walerian Łukasiński | 1822 | 1868 | 46 years | Congress Poland
| Polish military officer suspected of harboring anti-Russian sentiments, kept in prison even after completing his original sentence of 14 years. Sentence spent entirely in solitary confinement |
| Leotha Brown | 1964 | 2010 | 46 years | | Longest serving prisoner in Louisiana who served a life sentence for murder.[198] [199] He died in 2010.[200] |
| John Black | December 4, 1925 | October 6, 1971 | 45 years, 10 months | | Convicted of murder in Leavenworth, Kansas in 1925, he was paroled in 1971 aged 77.[201] |
| Richard Phillips | 1973 | 2018 | 45 years, 7 months | | Sentenced to life without parole for a fatal shooting in Detroit in 1971. The case was "based almost entirely" on false testimony by one witness. Exonerated due to the intervention of the University of Michigan's Innocence Clinic and awarded $1.5 million by the state in 2019.[202] |
| Iwao Hakamada | September 11, 1968 | March 27, 2014 | |  | Spent entirely in death row. See below. |
| Brent Eugene Koster | July 21, 1975 | January 21, 2021 | | | Michigan serial killer.[203] He was granted parole in 2020 and was released on January 21, 2021.[204] [205] |
| Ronald DeFeo Jr. | November 21, 1975 | March 12, 2021 | | | Perpetrator of the Amityville family murders. |
| Amy Archer-Gilligan | 1917 | 1962 | 45 years | | Nursing home proprietor who poisoned her two husbands and a number of her tenants to cash on their life insurance. Originally sentenced to death, the sentence was changed to life in prison after a retrial in 1919. Served her sentence in a mental hospital from 1924 to her death. |
| Clarence Carnes | 1943 | 1988 | 45 years | | Originally sentenced to life in prison for murder when he was 16 years old, he was sent to Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary in 1945 after two unsuccessful escape attempts. He took part in the "Battle of Alcatraz" the following year, but was recaptured and was sentenced to a further 203 years in prison. He was granted parole in 1973, but it was revoked twice before he died in prison from AIDS-related complications. |
| Albert Woodfox | 1971 | 2016 | 45 years | | Black Panther imprisoned for robbery and later put in solitary confinement for the murder of a prison guard in 1972. See below. |
| Kamal Thabet Abdul Majid | 1973 | 2018 | 45 years |  | Sentenced to 60 years for the murders of his uncle and grandfather, and of his father's murderer (whom he met in prison) when he was 20 years old. Pardoned.[206] |
| David Owen Brooks | 1975 | May 28, 2020 | 45 years | | Second accomplice of Dean Corll. Died in prison; his last parole was denied in 2015.[207] |
| Warren Harris | October 1977 | 2024 | 46 years | | Serial killer who, as a teenager, fatally stabbed four people, three of whom were gay men, in New Orleans' French Quarter from February to April 1977. Convicted for three of the murders, he was given three consecutive life terms without parole. Harris was resentenced to life with parole in 2021 and was granted parole on April 17, 2024. As per his parole conditions, Harris will remain under supervision for the rest of his life.[208] |
| Leonard Peltier | 1977 | ongoing | 45 years | | American Indian Movement activist; convicted of killing two Federal agents in 1975. Escaped & recaptured in 1979. Last denied clemency in 2017, and scheduled for release no earlier than 2035. |
| Terrance Alden | 1977 | September 2, 2022 | 45 years | | Known as the "Bionic Bandit", convicted in 1977 of five bank robberies in the Saint Louis, Missouri area after having escaped from Trenton State Prison while serving a murder conviction.[209] Released on September 9, 2022. |
| Wilbert Jones | February 6, 1973 | November 15, 2017 | 44 years, 9 months, 9 days | | Sentenced to life for sexual assault, case later reviewed and he was exonerated in 2018.[210] |
| Dennis Whitney | 1960 | April 24, 2005 | 44 years, 9 months | | Embarked on a cross country killing spree between February and March 1960, resulting in seven deaths.[211] |
| Otis Johnson | 1970 | August 2014 | 44 years, 8 months | | Member of the Fruit of Islam, the paramilitary wing of the Nation of Islam, sentenced to 44 years in prison for the attempted murder of a police officer when he was 25, and 8 months for a shoplifting charge when he was 17.[212] [213] [214] |
| Magdelaine Chapelain | 1679 | 1724 | 44 years, six months | | Parisian fortune-teller involved in the Affair of the Poisons. Died in prison. |
| Kim Sŏn-myŏng | 1951 | 1995 | 44 years | | Longest held of the "unconverted long-term prisoners," North Korean POWs captured during the Korean War who refused to renounce Juche. Kim Sŏn-myŏng was born in the south but joined the north, and was sentenced to death. The sentence was later commuted to life in prison; his family denounced him and had him declared dead in 1975. Released to North Korea. |
| Thomas Hagan | 1966 | March 19, 2010 | 44 years | | Assassin of Malcolm X. Since 1988 he was on a work release program under minimum security. Paroled. |
| Sharon Wiggins | 1969 | 2013 | 44 years | | Longest juvenile female serving life without parole. Sentenced to death for a fatal bank robbery when she was 17 years old, commuted to life in prison without parole in 1972. |
| William Garrison | 1976 | 2020 | 44 years | | Was jailed for life at the age of 16 for the murder of a 50-year-old man during a home invasion. Died from COVID-19 just 24 days before he was likely to be released.[215] |
| Ronnie Long | 1976 | 2020 | 44 years | | Was wrongly convicted by an all-white jury of the rape of a white woman when he, an African-American man, was 20. He was exonerated in 2020.[216] |
| Anthony Blanks | 1978 | 2022 | 44 years | | Blanks killed a police officer in New York in 1976. He was convicted in 1978 and was granted parole in 2022.[217] |
| John J. Palm | 1937 | 1981 | 44 years | | Convicted of killing a deputy sheriff in 1937 and was originally sentenced to death, but his sentence was commuted to life imprisonment by Connecticut Governor Wilbur L. Cross.[218] |
| Freddy Horion | 1979 | ongoing | | | Convicted for 6 murders.[219] [220] | |
| Name | Sentence start | Sentence end | Sentence duration | Country | Description |
|---|
| Tommy Zeigler | July 16, 1976 | ongoing | | | Quadruple murder of Eunice Zeigler, Perry and Virginia Edwards, and Charlie Mays. He is Florida's longest serving death row inmate.[230] |
| Virgil Delano Presnell Jr. | October 19, 1976 | ongoing | | | Longest serving death row inmate in Georgia.[231] Sentenced to death for kidnapping, raping and murdering an 8-year-old girl.[232] [233] |
| Richard Gerald Jordan | March 2, 1977 | ongoing | | | Sentenced to death for the abduction and murder of a woman in Mississippi. Jordan is Mississippi's longest serving death row inmate.[234] |
| James Franklin Rose | May 13, 1977 | ongoing | | | Sentenced to death in Florida for killing the daughter of his ex-girlfriend. In 2018, he was sentenced to life without parole for the rape and murder of a woman in 1975.[235] |
| Harvey Earvin | October 26, 1977 | ongoing | | | Longest held prisoner on death row in Texas. Sentenced to death for shooting and killing a service station attendant in 1976.[236] [237] |
| Iwao Hakamada | September 11, 1968 | March 27, 2014 | | | Granted a retrial and found innocent after it was determined that the evidence used to convict him the first time was forged. |
| Raymond Riles | April 2, 1976 | April 14, 2021 | 45 years, 12 days | | One of the longest held prisoners on death row in Texas. His execution was stayed several times from 1980 onward for different reasons. He was later diagnosed with mental problems and is considered not mentally fit to be executed. He tried to commit suicide in 1985 by setting his jail cell on fire. His death sentence was thrown out on April 14, 2021.[238] He was sentenced to life imprisonment on June 9, 2021.[239] |
| Clarence Curtis Jordan | September 12, 1978 | ongoing | | | Sentenced for the 1977 murder of a market clerk in Texas.[240] |
| Arturo Daniel Aranda | May 18, 1979 | ongoing | | | Sentenced for the 1976 murder of a police officer in Texas.[241] |
| Albert Greenwood Brown | March 2, 1982 | ongoing | | | Pedophile who abducted and murdered a 15-year-old on her way to school while being on parole for molesting another girl in California. Brown was scheduled for execution on September 30, 2010, but it was put on hold due to lethal injection supplies being unavailable at the time. |
| Hiroshi Sakaguchi | June 18, 1982 | ongoing | | | United Red Army member who murdered two police officers and an innocent bystander in a shootout with police in 1972 |
| Arthur Lee Giles | August 18, 1979 | September 30, 2020 | | | Was the longest-serving inmate on Alabama's death row, having been convicted of the 1978 murders of a couple in Blount County, Alabama.[242] |
| Patrick McKenna | 1980 | April 19, 2021 | 41 years | | Spent most of his adult life in prison for various violent crimes, and was sentenced to death for the murder of his cellmate.[243] |
| Douglas Stankewitz | October 12, 1978 | May 3, 2019 | | | Oldest death row inmate at California's San Quentin State Prison, a member of the Mono nation sentenced to death for the abduction and murder of a 22-year-old woman. Retried twice and sentenced to death on both occasions.[244] Retried a third time and sentenced to life in prison without parole.[245] |
| Thomas Eugene Creech | January 1, 1983 | ongoing | | | Sentenced to death for killing a fellow prisoner while incarcerated in Idaho 1981. Creech had been previously on death row for another murder, but his death sentence was overturned by the United States Supreme Court in 1977 after appeal. |
| Ronald Allen Smith | March 22, 1983 | ongoing | | | Only Canadian on death row in the United States and one of two death row inmates in Montana. Smith, along with another man, murdered two Native American men who offered them a ride while the former were under the influence of LSD. His accomplice accepted a plea deal to avoid the death penalty, while Smith refused and requested capital punishment for himself. |
| Doug Clark | March 24, 1983 | October 11, 2023 | 40 years, 200.5 days | | One of the couple known as the "Sunset Strip Killers", who raped and murdered six women in Los Angeles during the summer of 1980. His partner, Carol Bundy, died in prison in 2003. Clark died of natural causes at a medical facility in 2023.[246] |
| George Banks | June 22, 1983 | ongoing | | | Spree killer sentenced to death for the murders of twelve people in the 1982 Wilkes-Barre Shootings, including his five children. Although his insanity defence was rejected at the trial, he was later ruled incompetent to be executed in 2004 and 2010. |
| Michael Morales | June 30, 1983 | ongoing | | | Raped and murdered a 17-year-old girl who was in a love triangle with Morales's cousin and another man in California; his cousin was sentenced to life in prison as inductor. Though Morales did not deny his guilt, doubts about the evidence presented in his trial mounted as his scheduled execution for February 26, 2006, came near. The execution was postponed indefinitely due to medical professionals refusing to participate in executions, as their presence is obligatory under California law. |
| Richard Dean Turner | 1980 | March 23, 2024 | 44 years | | Shot and killed a couple during a burglary in California in 1979, whilst under the influence of alcohol and drugs. He died in prison in 2024.[247] | |
| Name | Sentence start | Sentence end | Sentence duration | Country | Description |
|---|
| Cesar Fierro | February 14, 1980 | December 19, 2019 | | | Mexican national arrested in Ciudad Juarez for the murder of a cab driver in El Paso and convicted in spite of no existing physical evidence linking him to the case. Formerly held on death row in Huntsville, Texas. His sentence was changed to life in prison on December 19, 2019.[248] [249] |
| Murray Hooper | February 11, 1983 | November 16, 2022 | | | Convicted of participating in the December 31, 1980, robbery and murders of William Patrick Redmond and his mother-in-law Helen Phelps and the attempted murder of Redmond's wife Marilyn. He was executed by lethal injection on November 16, 2022, despite his guilt being questioned by certain officials.[250] [251] |
| William Theodore Boliek Jr. | December 11, 1984 | ongoing | | | Sentenced to death for the murder of an 18-year-old girl in Kansas City in 1983. In 1997, Boliek was granted a stay of execution by Governor Mel Carnahan. Carnahan died in a plane crash in 2000 and Boliek's case was not resolved. A court determined only Carnahan could overturn the stay, effectively leaving Boliek's case in permanent limbo. Governor Jay Nixon's office determined Boliek would not be executed and he will spend the remainder of his life in prison. Boliek is Missouri's longest-serving death row inmate.[252] [253] [254] [255] |
| Richard Delmer Boyer | December 14, 1984 | ongoing | | | Fatally stabbed an elderly couple. |
| Malcolm Robbins | May 12, 1983 | January 27, 2023 | | | Sentenced to death in 1983 for first degree murder in Santa Barbara County, California.[256] |
| Gary Alvord | April 9, 1974 | May 19, 2013 | | | Schizophrenic sentenced to death in Florida for the murder of three women over the price of one game of pool. Died of a brain tumor after several delays. |
| Richard Rojem jr | July 15, 1985 | June 27, 2024 | | | Sentenced for the July 1984 kidnapping, sexual assault and murder of his former stepdaughter, 7-year-old Layla Cummings.[257] Executed on June 27, 2024.[258] |
| Lawrence Bittaker | March 24, 1981 | December 13, 2019 | | | One of the two "Toolbox Killers" who kidnapped, raped, tortured and murdered five teenage girls in southern California during a period of five months in 1979. Died of natural causes in 2019. His partner in crime, Roy Norris, was sentenced to life in prison with possibility of parole after 30 years in exchange for testifying against Bittaker. |
| Thomas Knight | April 21, 1975 | January 7, 2014 | | | Sentenced to death for the murders of three people in Florida. Knight murdered a couple in Miami in 1974 and later murdered a corrections officer while on death row in 1980. He was executed by lethal injection on January 7, 2014.[259] |
| Carey Dean Moore | June 20, 1980 | August 14, 2018 | | | Sentenced to death for the murders of two taxicab drivers in Nebraska. He was executed by lethal injection on August 14, 2018. He was Nebraska's longest serving death row inmate.[260] |
| Kevin Cooper | May 21, 1985 | ongoing | | | Career burglar sentenced to death for the murders of four members of the same family and attempted murder of two others during a home invasion in Chino Hills, California in 1983, shortly after he escaped from prison. Cooper was scheduled for execution on February 10, 2004, but it was postponed to allow DNA testing of the crime scene and getaway vehicle that did not exist at the time of his conviction. The results of both tests supported the case against Cooper. |
| Douglas Stewart Carter | December 27, 1985 | ongoing | | | Killed an elderly woman during a burglary in Provo, Utah. Assigned lethal injection. |
| Michael Owen Perry | January 8, 1986 | ongoing | | | Murdered his parents, two of his cousins, and his 2-year-old nephew in Lake Arthur, Louisiana. Perry is Louisiana's longest serving death row inmate.[261] |
| Gerald Ross Pizzuto Jr. | May 1, 1986 | ongoing | | | Beat a Marsing, Idaho woman and her nephew to death in July 1985. He was scheduled for execution on June 2, 2021, despite being terminally ill.[262] [263] He was granted a stay of execution on May 18, 2021, until a commutation hearing in November 2021.[264] |
| Sadamichi Hirasawa | 1950 | 1987 | 37 years | | Confessed under torture to have committed the Teikoku Bank Incident of 1948, a mass poisoning of Imperial Bank employees that killed ten people. Hirasawa was never executed because no Justice Minister wanted to sign his death warrant, as all believed that he had been falsely charged. However, he wasn't granted a retrial either, and he was still in death row when he died from pneumonia in 1987. |
| Tiequon Cox | May 7, 1986 | ongoing | | | Member of the Crips sentenced to death for the hired mass murder of five relatives of former NFL player Kermit Alexander in their home. Cox was 18 at the time of the crimes. |
| David Earl Miller | March 17, 1982 | December 6, 2018 | | | Sentenced to death for the 1981 murder of 23-year-old intellectually disabled woman, Lee Standifer. Miller was executed by electric chair in December 2018. He was Tennessee's longest serving death row inmate.[265] |
| Brandon Astor Jones | October 17, 1979 | February 3, 2016 | | | Sentenced to death for his involvement in the felony murder of a convenience store manager in Georgia. Was retried and sentenced to death again in 1997 because the jurors at the first trial had brought a Bible into the deliberation room. Oldest prisoner in Georgia at the time of his execution, aged 72. |
| Tomiyama Tsuneki | 1967 | 2003 | 36 years | | Died of kidney failure in prison, at the age of 86.[266] |
| Romell Broom | October 24, 1985 | December 28, 2020 | | | Abducted, raped, and strangled a 14-year-old girl returning from a football game in East Cleveland, Ohio, and also attempted to kidnap two of her friends. Survived an attempted execution by lethal injection on September 15, 2009, because the executioners couldn't find a suitable vein. He died in prison from COVID-19 complications on December 28, 2020.[267] [268] [269] |
| Ralph Leroy Menzies | March 23, 1988 | ongoing | | | Abducted and strangled a female gas station attendant in Kearns, Utah. Requested death by firing squad. |
| David Carpenter | May 10, 1988 | ongoing | | | Known as the "Trailside Killer", killed at least ten hikers and attacked another one in state parks near San Francisco. He was attributed to a 1979 murder after a DNA match in December 2009. |
| David Allen Raley | May 24, 1988 | ongoing | | | Security guard who abducted, raped, beat, and stabbed two teenage girls in the abandoned Carolands mansion where he worked, before throwing them in a landfill. One of his victims died and the other survived. |
| Ronald Gray | June 29, 1988 | ongoing | | | Convict held for the longest time ever on the US Military death row, a serial rapist and murderer who committed his crimes while stationed in Fort Bragg as a member of the 82nd Airborne Division. |
| Edmund Zagorski | March 27, 1984 | November 1, 2018 | | | Sentenced to death by the state of Tennessee for the 1983 murders of two men, and was executed by electrocution in 2018. |
| Ronald Watson Lafferty | May 7, 1985 | November 11, 2019 | | | Self-proclaimed prophet from Utah who claimed to have been divinely mandated to murder a number of people starting with his sister-in-law and her baby daughter. A death sentence was overturned on the grounds that he was not competent to stand trial, but he was deemed competent, retried, and sentenced to death again in 1996. Lafferty had requested to be executed by firing squad. |
| Edward Harold Schad | December 27, 1979 | October 9, 2013 | | | Oldest prisoner in Arizona death row at the time of his execution by lethal injection, aged 71. Sentenced to death for the murder and robbery of a 74-year-old man in 1978, while he was in parole for another murder ten years prior.[270] [271] |
| Pervis Tyrone Payne | February 16, 1988 | November 18, 2021 | | | Murdered an acquaintance and her 2-year-old daughter. Payne was scheduled to be executed in December 2020, but was given a reprieve until April 2021 due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.[272] In September 2020, DNA testing was ordered to investigate his claims of innocence.[273] Payne was resentenced to two concurrent life sentences on January 31, 2022. |
| Cynthia Coffman | August 31, 1989 | ongoing | | | Convicted along with her boyfriend James Marlow of the murders of four women from October to November 1986. Coffman admits to committing the murders, but claims she suffered from battered-woman syndrome. |
| James Gregory Marlow | Convicted along with his girlfriend Cynthia Coffman of the murders of four women from October to November 1986. |
| Sakae Menda | March 23, 1950 | July 15, 1983 | | | After being arrested for stealing rice, Menda was tortured until he confessed to the murders of a Buddhist priest and his wife, which he did not commit. He was not represented by a lawyer, no physical evidence linking Menda to the murders was ever produced, and the testimony of witnesses backing his alibi was deliberately kept out of his trial. In 1979 he was granted a retrial and in 1983 he was acquitted, becoming the first person in the History of Japan to be released from death row. |
| Jack Alderman | June 1975 | September 16, 2008 | 33 years | | Murdered his wife with a wrench in Georgia. Executed by lethal injection. |
| Bobby Joe Long | July 25, 1986 | May 23, 2019 | | | Known as "The Classified Ad Rapist" or "The Adman Rapist", kidnapped, raped and killed at least ten women in Tampa Bay Area in Florida during an eight-month period in 1984. He was executed on May 23, 2019, by lethal injection. |
| Thomas Warren Whisenhant | September 7, 1977 | May 27, 2010 | | | Sentenced to death for the murder of a convenience store clerk in Alabama. He later admitted to murdering a further three women in Mobile County. He was executed by lethal injection on May 27, 2010. At the time of his execution, he was Alabama's longest serving death row inmate.[274] |
| Dayton Leroy Rogers | June 9, 1989 | November 12, 2021 | | | Rogers was convicted in May 1989 for the murders of 23-year-old Lisa Marie Mock, 26-year-old Maureen Ann Hodges, 35-old Christine Lotus Adams, 20- year-old Cynthia Devore, 26-year-old Nondace "Noni" Cervantes, and 16-year-old Riatha Gyles. Removed from death row for the final time on November 12, 2021, due in part to a new law signed by Governor Kate Brown, which limited the amount of aggravating factors required for seeking the death penalty.[275] |
| Robert Brian Waterhouse | September 3, 1980 | February 5, 2012 | | | Murdered and mutilated a woman in Florida while he was on parole from a life sentence for murder. Executed in 2012.[276] |
| Henry McCollum | 1983 | September 2, 2014 | 31 years | | Longest serving death row inmate in North Carolina. Sentenced for the rape and murder of an 11-year-old girl, while his half-brother Leon Brown was sentenced to life in prison. Both men were intellectually disabled. They were exonerated following DNA tests and released.[277] | |
