Skip to main content
1 comment

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." Source 1, Source 2Photo

you can click here to watch the video
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Philadelphia residents are horrified after 'drunk teenagers pee all over their property and have sex in front of their children' at an understaffed radio station block party

Philadelphia locals are furious after a local radio station's weekend concert ended with intoxicated youth peeing and publicly having sex on people's private property and in front of innocent children. Residents from the Philadelphia neighborhood Northern Liberties said that Radio 104.5's summer block party at the outdoor plaza called Piazza at Schmidts didn't have enough security guards or portable toilets. you can click here to watch the video Music fans who didn't want to wait in a long line to use the bathroom decided that the world was their public toilet and so they peed on the street and in people's backyards. + 4 View gallery Drunk concert attendees were caught having sex on people's private property and carried on for 40 minutes despite people yelling for them to stop The Daily News  spoke to resident Sibyl Lindsay, 35, who has lived in Northern Liberties for four years and decided to leave the concert early after her children were forced to witness...
Post a Comment
Read more

Naked Jewish women from the Mizocz ghetto wait in a line before their execution by the German Order Police with the assistance of Ukrainian auxiliaries

Naked Jewish women from the Mizocz ghetto wait in a line before their execution by the German Order Police with the assistance of Ukrainian auxiliaries Locals played a very important role in the mass shootings committed by the Germans in the Baltics and the USSR. In some cases, locals would instigate their own pogroms against Jews once the Germans arrived. Otherwise, local citizens would help the Einsatzgruppen and other units locate Jews in the immediate vicinity and then either assist with or participate in the mass killings. One of the facts that I learned about the Holocaust from my grandfather that has stuck with me even up through today is that we’ll never know truly how many died or who they were. There were people that were murdered, and not only were they murdered, but EVERY SINGLE PERSON that knew them, EVERY SINGLE PERSON WHO HAD EVER known them, were also murdered.  Try to imagine that. Every last human being you’ve ever come in to contact with, murdered.  Tha...
Post a Comment
Read more

Popular posts from this blog

How common were instances of sexual abuse in Nazi concentration camps

How common were instances of sexual abuse in Nazi concentration camps. The accounts that rap£ or prostitution was common, Were the guards were given "free reign" over the prisoners given view of them as subhuman The Nazis sort of developed a network of state-controlled brothels during the war. This included both the civilian and military brothels. The Nazis even set up brothels for the forced labor inmates that helped with the German war effort as incentives for higher production from prisoners in camps. Back then these brothels were suppose to serving several needs. For the soldiers that were far away from home, the Nazis thought that having these brothels would reduce the possibility of rape in occupied lands and reducing the sexual relations with impure local women or forced laborer's, as well. Heck, the Nazis tried to use these brothel women to cure homosexuality as a treatment with male prisoners that were gay. Regular German women were exempt from serving in these b...
Post a Comment
Read more

The prisoners in concentration camps have sex with each other

 The prisoners in concentration camps have sex with each other Steady on. Nearly all concentration camps were single-sex, and at those that held both men and women the sexes were usually kept separate, though at Auschwitz III (Monowitz) and possibly also some other sub-camps they worked together. At extermination camps (where the sexes were not separated) most of the prisoners were killed within 24 hours of arrival. Prisoners did not have privacy. Remember that at the time most people had a horror of same-sex relations, especially between men. However, some Kapos and even guards forced prisoners to have sex with them. In Night Elie Wiesel relates how he found his Kapo having sex with a female prisoner, and he (Wiesel) was given 25 lashes for finding them having sex.* In the Women’s Camp at least one guard forced another woman to have sex with her, and at many camps there was a piepel (camp bum boy). *He also describes the hanging of the piepel of a Blockältester ( ‘block senior’). ...
Post a Comment
Read more