WA had 8 inmates on death row when executions ended. Are they still alive?

It’s been more than 15 years since Washington state executed a death row inmate.

In 2014, then-Gov. Jay Inslee placed a moratorium on executions for the remainder of his term. This followed continuing federal conversations on capital punishment and increasing actions by states to pause or prohibit the practice.

Four years later, the Washington Supreme Court unanimously ruled that capital punishment was unconstitutional. The practice was formally removed from state law in 2023.

The eight inmates remaining on death row in 2018 had their sentences converted to life without the possibility of early release.

Here’s what has happened since then:

Where were executions held in Washington state?

Currently the third largest prison in Washington state, Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Walla was once the site of death row executions in Washington.

Between 1904 and 2010, the state carried out 78 executions by means of hanging and lethal injection. No women were executed.

The last person to be executed in Washington state, Cal Coburn Brown, died in September 2010.

He was sentenced to death by lethal injection for the rape and murder of a 22-year-old woman from Burien.

Washington State Penitentiary’s death chamber was ceremonially retired in 2024.

Who was on death row when the state abolished executions?

In 2018, these inmates were on death row in Washington state:

• Dayva Michael Cross
• Cecil Emile Davis
• Clark Richard Elmore
• Jonathan Lee Gentry
• Allen Eugene Gregory
• Byron Eugene Scherf
• Conner Michael Schierman
• Robert Lee Yates Jr.

Two of these men have since died.

Three remain at Washington State Penitentiary, and another three were transferred to other correctional facilities while serving out their sentences.

Which former death row inmates died in Washington?

Both Cross and Davis died before the death penalty was formally removed from state law, though their sentences had already been converted to life in prison.

In 2001, Cross was convicted of stabbing his wife and two stepdaughters to death in 1999. He was killed by another inmate at Washington State Penitentiary in 2022.

Davis robbed, raped and murdered a Tacoma woman in 1997.

According to the Washington State Department of Corrections, he died in 2022.

No further information on the cause or nature of his death was available.

Ex-death row inmates at Washington State Penitentiary

While Washington State Penitentiary no longer carries out executions, several prisoners with particularly long sentences for violent offenses remain incarcerated there.

Robert Lee Yates Jr., 73, is serving several consecutive life sentences at Washington State Penitentiary.

He admitted to murdering 13 women in Spokane County beginning in the late 1980s, and was later convicted of two additional murders in Pierce County.

In 2000, Yates was sentenced to 408 years in prison, but he received the death penalty after the Pierce County murder convictions in 2002.

His sentence was converted back to the original 408 years when the state outlawed executions.

Byron Eugene Scherf, 67, originally received the death penalty for the 2011 murder of a Monroe Correctional Complex officer inside a prison chapel.

At the time of the murder, he was serving a life sentence at the Monroe prison for abducting and raping a woman near Spokane.

Upon his 2013 murder conviction, Scherf asked for the death penalty, but the change to state law required his sentence be converted to life without parole.

Allen Eugene Gregory, now 53, was a major reason behind Washington state’s move to abolish death sentences.

He was sentenced to death in 2001 for the rape and murder of a Tacoma woman in 1996, later appealing his conviction.

That led in part to the Washington Supreme Court opinion converting all death penalties to life sentences.

Where else are former death row inmates housed?

Three other inmates are serving time at correctional facilities in Washington state after their death row convictions were converted to life sentences.

Although they were at Washington State Penitentiary while on death row, the inmates were transferred elsewhere at some point following the 2018 state supreme court decision.

Jonathan Lee Gentry, now 69, was convicted in 1991 for the 1988 murder of a 12-year-old girl in Kitsap County.

He is serving out his life sentence at the Washington Corrections Center in Shelton.

Clark Richard Elmore was convicted of raping and murdering of his girlfriend’s 14-year-old daughter in 1995.

The 74-year-old is serving out his life sentence at Airway Heights Corrections Center in Spokane County.

Conner Michael Schierman, 44, murdered a King County woman, her two sons and her sister, leading to his 2010 conviction.

He is incarcerated at Stafford Creek Corrections Center in Aberdeen.

Why did Washington state abolish the death penalty?

Upon review of Gregory’s death penalty sentencing, the Washington Supreme Court reviewed updated findings on state law and other relevant cases.

Notably, a report considered by the court found that Black defendants convicted between December 1981 and May 2014 were 3.5 to 4.6 times more likely to receive a death sentence than non-Black defendants.

The court found that Washington state’s death penalty was administered in an “arbitrary and racially based manner,” and was therefore against the state constitution due its lack of fundamental fairness.

The Washington Supreme Court also found that the state’s death penalty practice was unreliable, noting that the location of a crime had a greater impact on the potential for a death sentence than the crime itself.

What’s more, executions failed to achieve goals of retribution and deterring capital crimes, making it a “purposeless and needless imposition of pain and suffering,” the court stated in its opinion.

However, the court’s findings did not entirely outlaw capital punishment in Washington state.

Although Washington state could have amended its death penalty practices in an attempt to make them constitutional, state legislators agreed with the court’s findings and formally removed the practice from the Revised Code of Washington entirely.

This story was originally published April 17, 2026 at 5:00 AM with the headline "WA had 8 inmates on death row when executions ended. Are they still alive?."