The Brutal Case of Willie Francis

In 1945, a teenager from the Cajun town of St. Martinsville was arrested in Texas. A few months prior, a local pharmacist had been found shot dead, catalysing a months-long investigation that ultimately came to naught. After that 15-year-old Willie Francis was taken into custody though, they found the dead pharmacist’s wallet on his person.

Francis subsequently made an obscure confession without counsel present, "It was a secret about me and him."

Despite two separate confessions, he chose not to plead guilty. When the trial came to pass, the court appointed defence attorneys did nothing to defend him and the jury very quickly found him guilty. He was sentenced to death by electric chair. At the end of May 1946, the dreaded day arrived and Francis took his seat on ‘Gruesome Gertie’, a portable electric chair well-known to Louisianan inmates. The chair had been improperly set up by a drunk prison guard though, so when it was switched on, it didn’t execute him. From behind the leather hood, the teenager screamed and pleaded for the guards to turn it off. Afterwards, the sheriff lightly remarked, “This boy really got a shock when they turned that machine on."

A lawyer who learnt of the case stepped up to defend Francis, thinking that it would be unjust and cruel if the teen had to face the chair again. His appeal ultimately failed though, and Francis took to the chair a final time. There were a number of red flags surrounding this case though. For one thing, the claim about him having the dead man’s wallet was never evidenced in court. For another, the gun used to murder him belonged to a local deputy sheriff who’d previously threatened to kill the pharmacist.

To boot, the gun and the bullets disappeared from police evidence shortly before the trial. Continue reading

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