Charles Brooks, Jr.

The execution of Charles Brooks Jr., also known as Shareef Ahmad Abdul-Rahim, was carried out on December 7, 1982, at the Huntsville Unit in Texas. Brooks Jr., then 34, murdered 26-year-old mechanic David Preston Gregory in Fort Worth, Texas. Brooks Jr. was convicted and sentenced to death in 1977. Brooks Jr. was the first person in the United States to be executed using the, then, newly adopted method of lethal injection. He was also the first prisoner executed in Texas since 1964, and the first African-American to be executed anywhere in the United States in the post-Gregg era.