William H. Patton, 43, male, white, of Elaine, Arkansas, went out into the dark on July 28, 1940, answering a call about a prowler at a local doctor’s home. As the town’s night marshal, he searched the property and confronted the intruder. Gunfire erupted. Patton returned fire, wounding the man before collapsing from his own mortal wounds. Bloodhounds were brought in to pick up the trail, and the wounded suspect was tracked down and taken into custody a short time later.
The arrested man was identified as Percy Lewis. In the months that followed, prosecutors in Phillips County charged him with first-degree murder for killing W. H. Patton. A jury convicted Lewis, and the court sentenced him to death. On June 6, 1941, the state carried out the sentence in the electric chair then in use at Arkansas’s Tucker prison farm, closing the case with a finality that echoed through the small Delta town that had lost its night marshal the previous summer.
Patton’s death date and place are recorded in public memorial and genealogy records, which list him as William Henry Patton, born January 24, 1897, and buried in Phillips County—details that place his age at forty-three at the time he fell in the line of duty. The stark timeline—an evening call, a sudden exchange of shots, a bloodhound-led arrest, and a conviction that ended in execution the next year—captures the swift, grim course of justice after the killing of Elaine’s night marshal.
