Documenting and Analyzing the History of Federal Executions
Samuel Greenhill
Samuel Greenhill and David Dewberry were arrested and charged with the killing of Harry S. White, a guard at a federal nitrate facility in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. The killing of the white guard by the two Black men occurred on December 8, 1923, after White put the men in custody for hunting on federal property.
Birmingham News, August 6, 1925
Dewberry was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment while Greenhill, determined to have fired the fatal shot, received a death sentence. After President Coolidge refused to intervene in the case, Greenhill was hanged in Florence, Alabama, on October 10, 1925.
I am a sociologist and death penalty scholar at the State University of New York at Geneseo. I am also a Pittsburgh native. My present research focuses on the history of the death penalty in Allegheny County (Pittsburgh), Pa.
This website is dedicated to collecting, analyzing, and sharing information about all Allegheny County cases in which a death sentence was imposed.
Please share any questions or comments, errors or omissions, or other matters of interest related to these cases or to the broader history of the death penalty in Allegheny County.
View all posts by Bill Lofquist
The Federal Death Penalty Project 