The teen death row inmate who was executed twice

On execution day, executioners strapped Willie into “Gruesome Gertie,” the electric chair that had been used to execute twenty-three people; he convulsed and screamed, but did not die. The portable electric chair, known as “Gruesome Gertie,” was found to have been improperly set up by an intoxicated prison guard and inmate from the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola. When the sheriff ordered the electricity shut off, Willie was taken back to his cell, spared and hopeful.

Reflecting on the experience afterward, Willie wrote:

I didn’t think about my whole life like at the picture show. Just, ‘Willie, you’re going outta this world in this bad chair.’ Sometimes I thought it so loud it hurt my head and when they put the #black bag over my head I was all locked up inside the bag with the loud thinking . . . I felt a burning in my head and my left leg and I jumped against the straps. When the straps kept cutting me I hoped I was alive and I asked the electric man to let me breathe. That’s when they took the bag off my head. Within an hour of the failed execution, Louisiana Governor Jimmie Davis ordered the chair fixed, and a second try was scheduled for one week later. On May 9, 1947, at 12:05 p.m., Willie Francis died in Louisiana’s electric chair. Willie Francis was executed—twice—for the alleged murder of 53-year-old pharmacist Andrew Thomas in St. Martinville, Louisiana in 1944. Thomas was found shot five times at close range just outside of his home. In May 3, 1946, the portable electric chair dubbed "Gruesome Gertie" was improperly readied for use, as the men in charge of setting it up, Captain Ephie Foster and an inmate who was also an electrician, Vincent Venezia, were drunk at the time. When the switch was flipped to kill Francis, he simply started jerking around violently in the chair. When it was clear he wasn't going to die, officials removed him and took him for examination by the witnessing coroner. It was at this point Captain Foster, yelled at him, “I missed you this time, but I'll get you next week if I have to use an iron bar!” After the botched execution, a young lawyer, Bertrand DeBlanc, decided to take Francis' case, as he felt it was unjust. He and his team failed—Willie Francis was returned to the electric chair on May 9, 1947. A couple of days before the execution, he said he was going to meet the Lord with his "Sunday pants and Sunday heart." Continue reading

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