Biography
Odell Waller was a Black Virginia sharecropper condemned to death after killing his landlord. The February 8, 1941 Militant reports that the Workers Defense League was appealing his conviction, describing the killing as self-defense and arguing that a jury restricted to poll-tax payers excluded sharecroppers and other poor people. Counsel Thomas Stone and John F. Finerty sought review in the Virginia Court of Appeals, with NAACP and Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters cooperation. An execution originally set for December 27 had been stayed until March 14. Those dates describe execution schedules, not a completed execution or release; his ultimate outcome and exact custody endpoints are unestablished by this issue. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/newspape/themilitant/1941/v5n06-feb-08-1941.pdf#page=2
Albert Parker’s article in The Militant of July 11, 1942 reports that Odell Waller was executed in the electric chair at Richmond, Virginia, on the morning of July 2, 1942. This later report follows the appeals and stays described in the February 1941 account. Source: https://www.themilitant.com/1942/0628/MIL0628.pdf
Albert Parker’s article in The Militant of July 11, 1942 reports that Odell Waller was executed in the electric chair at Richmond, Virginia, on the morning of July 2, 1942. This later report follows the appeals and stays described in the February 1941 account.
The Militant, July 11, 1942, page 1, Odell Waller Is Dead, Albert Parker.
A reprinted June 1942 editorial reports that the Supreme Court again declined review of Waller’s case on June 1, 1942. It linked his appeal to exclusion of poor people from Virginia juries through the poll tax.
The July 11, 1942 Militant identifies Turner Clement as the judge at Waller’s two-day trial, which ended September 27, 1940. Albert Parker reports 630 days on death row before the July 2 execution; this is a reported death-row period, not a complete-custody calculation. Primary newspaper source, PDF page 1.