Robert Gleason: The Killer Who Demanded His Own Execution

Robert Gleason was a Virginia inmate already serving life for one murder when he strangled two fellow prisoners in 2009 and 2010, then demanded the state execute him and warned he would keep killing if it refused. He got his wish on January 16, 2013, dying in the electric chair at Greensville Correctional Center at the age of 42.¹

Born April 10, 1970, in Lowell, Massachusetts, Gleason had worked as an award-winning tattoo artist running Mom’s Tattoo Parlor in Colonial Heights, Virginia, in 2006 and 2007.² He was affiliated with the Hells Angels and claimed in court to be a former hit man, though that claim was never substantiated. He had two young sons. Psychiatric evaluations later documented a long history of depression, anxiety, paranoia, substance abuse, and multiple suicide attempts.

The Three Murders

Gleason’s first known killing was on May 8, 2007, in a wooded area off Virginia Route 130 in Amherst County. He shot Michael Kent Jamerson four times with a .40-caliber pistol. The killing was tied to a methamphetamine ring operating out of Campbell County; Gleason believed Jamerson was about to cooperate with federal investigators.³ He pleaded guilty in late April 2008 and was sentenced to life on June 5, 2008. At sentencing he told the court, “I have no regret for what happened to Mike Jamerson at all. I gave that man what needed to be done.”

Two years later, to the day, he killed again. Gleason was at Wallens Ridge State Prison in Big Stone Gap when he strangled his 63-year-old cellmate Harvey Gray Watson Jr. on May 8, 2009. He later said he had spent seven days asking officers and counselors to move Watson, who had mild mental impairment and a record of disruptive behavior, and that his requests were met with mockery. On May 8 he bound Watson’s hands with torn bedsheet strips, stuffed a sock in his mouth, pressed a urine-soaked sponge in his face, beat him, and strangled him.⁴ The body stayed in the shared cell for roughly 15 hours. The killing went undetected in part because officers had falsified mandatory inmate counts.⁵

Transferred to Red Onion State Prison, Virginia’s supermax facility, and placed in solitary confinement, Gleason killed a third time on July 28, 2010, while awaiting sentencing for Watson’s death. His victim was Aaron Cooper, 26, serving a 34-year sentence for robbery and carjacking.⁶ The two were in adjacent solitary recreation cages separated by wire fencing. Gleason persuaded Cooper to try on what he called a “religious necklace” he was making, then looped a braided bedsheet noose around his neck when Cooper turned his back and strangled him through the fence.⁴ Surveillance video indicated Cooper was choked on and off for close to an hour.⁷ As staff tried to resuscitate Cooper, Gleason mocked them: “You’re going to have to pump a lot harder than that.” He later said he killed Cooper as a favor to another inmate about to be released, to create a debt that would give him someone on the outside to “do his bidding.”

Why He Demanded Execution

Gleason knew Virginia law. Killing a fellow prisoner while incarcerated is a capital offense in Virginia, as is committing more than one murder within a three-year period. Both prison killings put him squarely inside those statutes, and he said openly that was the point. “Someone needs to stop it,” he told the Associated Press. “The only way to stop me is to put me on death row.”¹

He backed the threat up in court. He testified he felt “no remorse for it, zero,” warned the judge he “already had a few other inmates lined up” to kill if he did not receive a death sentence, and said no amount of lockdown would stop him. “You guys can lock me 24/7, take everything out of my cell,” he told the court. “Sooner or later, I’m gonna be the nice little man, and get out there” and kill again.⁴ When his court-appointed attorneys tried to negotiate a plea deal that would avoid the death penalty, he fired them and pleaded guilty to both prison murders on his own.⁸

Gleason offered more personal explanations too. He said execution would honor a promise to a loved one that he would not kill again, and he hoped his sons would “learn from his mistakes.”¹

The Competency Fight

Gleason pleaded guilty to Watson’s murder on December 21, 2010, in the Circuit Court of Wise County, and to Cooper’s on April 22, 2011. The court found the aggravating factors of “vileness” and “future dangerousness” beyond a reasonable doubt and imposed two death sentences. He waived all appeals.⁴

That waiver triggered a long legal battle brought not by Gleason but by his former attorneys, Jonathan Sheldon and Joseph Flood, who argued he was too mentally ill to make that choice. They cited his depression, suicide attempts, paranoia, and delusional thinking, and said prolonged solitary confinement had worsened his condition. Sheldon called the case “bizarre,” observing that “the death penalty is actually the sole motivator for the killing.”²

Every court disagreed. Court-appointed psychologist Dr. Leigh D. Hagan concluded Gleason had adequate intelligence, was not suffering from a mental illness that rendered him unable to make informed decisions, and had the capacity for reasoned choices.⁹ On September 19, 2011, the Circuit Court of Wise County found the waiver knowing, voluntary, and intelligent. The Supreme Court of Virginia affirmed both death sentences on June 7, 2012.⁴

In federal court, Chief U.S. District Judge Glen E. Conrad denied motions to reappoint the attorneys, hold a new competency hearing, and stay the execution, noting Gleason had “plainly and clearly expressed his desire to forgo any challenges to his death sentences” and had “steadfastly rejected legal assistance.” Addressing Sheldon’s claim that Gleason privately said he “did not want to die,” Conrad wrote: “The fact that the death row inmate does not ‘want to die’ does not mean that he wishes to pursue a legal challenge to his sentence of death.”¹⁰ At a January 4, 2013, hearing, Gleason spoke for himself: “I don’t want an attorney. I want to let the January 16th day go as is.”⁹ The Fourth Circuit and the U.S. Supreme Court rejected further stay requests.

Governor Bob McDonnell declined to intervene. He noted Gleason had never filed a clemency petition and had “expressed no remorse” while “consistently rejected any offers of legal assistance,” and said he reviewed the case on his own initiative and “found no compelling reason to intercede.”¹

The Execution

Gleason chose the electric chair over lethal injection, the first Virginia inmate to pick electrocution in nearly three years.¹¹ He was led into the death chamber at Greensville Correctional Center at 8:55 p.m. on January 16, 2013. Witnesses described him smiling, winking, and nodding at his spiritual advisor, who said Gleason was signaling that “all was well and that he was ready.”¹²

His final words were defiant. “Can they hear me out there?” he asked, before saying: “Well, I hope Percy ain’t going to wet the sponge. Put me on the highway going to Jackson and call my Irish buddies. Pog mo thóin. God bless.” The Gaelic phrase translates to “kiss my ass.”¹³ He was pronounced dead at 9:08 p.m.¹

A Death Row Volunteer

Gleason’s case is often cited in discussions of “death row volunteers,” inmates who waive their appeals and effectively consent to execution. Since capital punishment was reinstated in 1976, at least 165 defendants have done so, accounting for roughly 10 percent of all U.S. executions. Four of the first five people executed after Gregg v. Georgia were volunteers, and in several states, every person executed to date has been one.⁸

These cases raise a recurring question for courts: how to tell a competent decision to accept execution from a mentally ill person’s attempt at state-assisted suicide. Sheldon argued Gleason’s “mental illness is causing him to be suicidal, and he is enlisting the government’s help to end his life.”¹⁴ Every court that reviewed Gleason found him competent. What made his case unusual among volunteers was not the waiver itself but the sequence that produced it: he killed twice inside prison, said openly that he had killed in order to be killed, and promised to do it again if the state refused.

1
ABC News. Convicted Murderer Who Pleaded for Death Electrocuted in Virginia
2
Clark Prosecutor. Robert Charles Gleason Jr.
3
Newsadvance. Man Gets Life in Amherst Murder
4
VLex. Gleason v. Commonwealth
5
The Dispatch. Inmate Begs for Death Sentence
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Deseret News. Mother of Slain VA Inmate Claims Guard Conspiracy
7
NBC Washington. Man Who Killed 2 Fellow Inmates Executed in Virginia
8
Death Penalty Information Center. Execution Volunteers
9
VLex. Gleason v. Pearson
10
Progress-Index. Governor, Judge Won’t Stop Execution
11
BBC News. Virginia Man Executed by Electric Chair
12
University of Richmond Law Review. Virginia’s Death Chamber
13
WTKR. Killer’s Last Words: Kiss My Ass
14
Death Penalty Information Center. First Inmate to Be Executed in 2013 Asked for Death Penalty, Exhibited Severe Mental Illness