Willie Francis and Gruesome Gertie

On May 9, 1947, Willie Francis sat strapped to Louisiana's traveling electric chair Gruesome Gertie for the second time. A little over a year earlier, Francis sat in the same chair. That time, however, the chair's operator, after a little too much to drink, could not hook up the chair to the portable generator correctly. So, Francis, receiving an initial electrical shock, failed to perish. One year later, and after a trip to the U.S. Supreme Court, Francis once again approached the chair in St. Martinville, LA, sat down, and awaited the shock. This time, the chair performed its duty and Francis died.

Francis' case, which Gilbert King wrote about in The Execution of Willie Francis: Race, Murder and the Search for Justice in the American South (2008), contains so many irregularities, apart from the botched execution, that it illuminates the problems that inhabited the judicial system in the Deep South during the mid-twentieth century. 


Accused of murdering Andrew Thomas in November 1944, Francis did not receive adequate council to mount a defense. Nine months after Thomas' murder, police in Port Arthur, TX picked up Francis and charged him with trafficking. They dropped that charge, after finding out that Francis did not have anything to do with it, then they kept him for a little while longer. During that time, Francis confessed to the November 1944 murder of St. Martinville pharmacy owner Andrew Thomas. The above confession, in Francis' handwriting, is from that incident. Francis admitted to killing Thomas again in the police car back to St. Martinville as well.

 During the trial, Francis' defense did not call any witnesses, contest the fact that the murder weapon became lost in transit to ballistics testing in Washington D.C., that fingerprints could not prove Francis' involvement, and they did not counter Thomas' neighbor who reported seeing a car with headlights in front of Thomas' house when she heard gunshots. Francis, as a fifteen year old African American male at the time of the murder, did not own a car or have easy access to one. The defense did not mention any of this. Instead, they just said they did not have any comments. 

Francis, between his two executions, produced a pamphlet entitled "My Trip to the Chair." The pamphlet recounts Francis' first trip to Gruesome Gertie's lap and what transpired afterwards. He does not talk about the murder of Andrew Thomas, but he does talk about being at peace and gaining the ability to stand like a man on his way to death. He concludes the pamphlet by saying, "Mr. Montgomery [who wrote the pamphlet] says that in writing this I may have helped someone, somehow. I hope so" (16). 

What does all of this have to do with Gaines? In the next post, I will discuss Willie Francis' influence on Gaines and A Lesson before Dying.