In 1946, 16-year-old Willie Francis was sentenced to death for the murder of a drugstore owner, but he miraculously survived the electric chair.

Willie Francis’ fascinating case is featured in the new book, “The Execution of Willie Francis,” by Gilbert King. The author spoke to Crimejunkies for a preview...

WHY DID YOU DECIDE TO WRITE A BOOK ABOUT WILLIE FRANCIS?

I was helping a friend with some research for a crime encyclopedia and we came across this strange story of a teenaged boy who survived the electric chair in 1946.  I was immediately curious and a few months later, I actually made the first of many trips to St. Martinville, Louisiana and talked to some people who knew Willie Francis.  When a few of them told me there was more to it than what was known from the trial and from press accounts, I knew Willie's story was one people would want to read about.  

WHAT CAN YOU TELL US ABOUT WILLIE FRANCIS' BACKGROUND?

Willie was a stuttering, semi-literate African-American, the youngest of 13 children born to a sugar cane laborer. The family was very Catholic and well-respected around town. Like most blacks in Southwestern Louisiana in the 1940s, the Francises spoke mostly French at home.  Willie, too, was well-liked in St. Martinville, by blacks and whites alike.  In fact, I couldn't find anyone who said a bad word about him.  He'd never been in trouble with the law before. And when he was fifteen years old, he took a job working for a Andrew Thomas, a Cajun pharmacist, where he'd sweep the floors, make deliveries, and even do yard work for the 53-year old bachelor.  

TELL ME ABOUT WILLIE FRANCIS' ALLEGED CRIME.

Just after midnight on November 8, 1944, Andrew Thomas was returning home from a dinner with friends. He pulled his car into the garage and started walking toward his house when he was gunned down.  Neighbors heard rapid gunfire and thought it was coming from the Evangeline State Park, where there was a POW camp for captured German troops. But the next morning, Thomas was found dead, his body riddled with bullets.  The murder stunned the sleepy town of St. Martinville.  A killer or killers were at large, and nine months passed without any promising leads. Willie was visiting his sister in Port Arthur, Texas and was mistakenly picked up by police as a possible accomplice in a drug crime. But because his stutter was interpreted as a guilty conscience, police began asking him about other crimes in the area. That's when they discovered Willie was allegedly carrying a wallet that belonged to Andrew Thomas.  According to police, Willie freely confessed to the murder, though he wouldn't see a lawyer until a month later, and just a week before the trial that would sentence him to death by electric chair.  

NO WITNESSES TESTIFIED AND NO EVIDENCE WAS PRESENTED DURING THE TRIAL?

Willie had two court-appointed attorneys whose first act in defense of their client was to request withdrawal of a not-guilty plea.  This was a startling request, since the murder charge required a mandatory death penalty sentence.  The judge did not permit it, and Willie's trial began.  Not surprisingly, it was a travesty of justice.   The prosecution presented the case against Willie Francis, with little interruption.  Willie's lawyers didn't bother making an opening statement, or cross-examining any of the state's witnesses.  When the district attorney announced that the prosecution rested its case, Willie's lawyers rose and announced that they too rested their case without calling a single witness.  

The only evidence against Willie was obtained through interrogation while Willie sat, uncharged, in jail for a month without benefit of legal counsel.  The gun that was ultimately found near the crime scene belonged to a deputy sheriff in St. Martinville who was known to have once threatened to kill Andrew Thomas.   That gun, and the bullets, disappeared and was not presented as evidence.  Andrew Thomas's neighbors told the coroner that they saw an automobile pull in front of Thomas's house just before the gunshots were fired.  Willie didn't drive a car.  But his lawyers chose not to call the neighbors as witnesses.  

One of the most mysterious things about the case was that Willie wrote in his confession, "it was a secret between me and him," which seemed to contradict the prosecution's contention that the pharmacist was killed in a "stickup."  But no one ever brought it up again.  Andrew Thomas's brother, Claude was the chief of police in St. Martinville, and so there were many in town who believed the whole case was whitewashed from the very beginning.   The jury of twelve Cajun men needed only 15 minutes to reach a guilty verdict and Willie was sentenced to death by electrocution the next morning.  

HOW IS IT POSSIBLE THAT WILLIE FRANCIS SURVIVED THE CHAIR KNOWN AS "GRUESOME GERTIE?"

As strange as it sounds, at the time, Louisiana had a portable electric chair that they would bring from jail to jail and hook up to a powerful engine in the back of the truck.  The chair was kept at the Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola and the prisoners there nicknamed it "Gruesome Gertie."  Usually, a security team would travel with the warden in a separate car to supervise executions, but on May 2, 1946, Governor Jimmie Davis had arrived at Angola to meet with the warden about the deplorable conditions at the prison.  And so the warden sent a guard an an inmate out to execute Willie.  Naturally, these two guys were happy to be away from Angola and spent the night before drinking in various saloons around St. Martinville.  They even invited people in the bars to come by the jail the next morning and watch Willie die in the chair.  Two men took up the offer, and one of them would later state that the executioners were drinking all morning and it was a disgraceful exhibition.  They were so drunk, the witness said, that it was impossible for them to know what they were doing.

Not surprisingly, they failed to wire the chair properly, so when the switch was thrown, Willie received electricity, but not enough to kill him.  He began shaking and convulsing and the chair began to rock and slide on the floor.  Eventually, he began to scream, and and after a second surge failed to kill him, the sheriff ordered the engine cut and deputies helped Willie out of the chair.  The executioner was not pleased.  He told Willie he'd kill him next week if he had to use a rock.  The next morning, Willie's strange ordeal was front page news across the country, and newsmen raced to St. Martinville to cover the story.  

TELL ME ABOUT ATTORNEY BERTRAND DEBLANC. WHY DID HE DECIDE TO TAKE ON FRANCIS' CASE AFTER HE SURVIVED HE CHAIR?

Representing a convicted black murderer wasn't an easy thing to do for a young Cajun lawyer in a small southern town.  It was also made more complicated by the fact that Andrew Thomas was one of Bertrand DeBlanc's best friends.  There were a lot of people in town who were not pleased that DeBlanc was trying to save Willie's life.  But DeBlanc strongly believed, like many people around the country, that God had intervened.  He also believed that it was cruel and unusual punishment to subject someone to the electric chair twice.  DeBlanc felt that Willie had done his part and it was the State's negligence that denied Willie an instantaneous and painless death.  

WILLIE FRANCIS' CASE WAS EVENTUALLY HEARD IN THE U.S. SUPREME COURT?

In 1946, the US Supreme Court was as contentious as any in history.  The Justices were feuding over leadership roles and conflicts of interest and some were barely talking to each other.  The disputes became so heated that one U.S. Senator called for resignations for the good of the country.  So Willie's case came before it at a time when the Court had been besieged by antagonistic 5-4 decisions, and Willie's proved to be no exception.  There was a lot of drama behind the scenes, but ultimately, the Court ruled that Louisiana had the right to re-execute Willie Francis.  What's interesting is that Felix Frankfurter, who was personally opposed to the death penalty, was also a firm believer in judicial restraint.  So while he felt Louisiana's actions were "shocking" and "a barbaric thing to do," he would not vote to overturn the state's decision to send the youth back to the electric chair.  But Frankfurter admitted the case weighed heavily on his mind, and he ultimately made a last ditch effort, behind the backs of the other justices, to overturn his own decision and save Willie's life.  

WHAT DO YOU WANT READERS TO LEARN FROM YOUR BOOK?

I've always been a fan of historical true crime, and I approached this book with two main objectives--to learn everything I could about a very intriguing case with a "cold crime" aspect to it, and secondly, to tell a good story and put it into historical context.   What surprised me most were the contradictions in this story.  Here you had a lawyer, Bertrand DeBlanc, who was not opposed to the death penalty, and Felix Frankfurter, who was.  Yet both men wanted to save Willie Francis from a second trip to the electric chair.  Mostly, though, I think readers will be intrigued, as I was, of the strange and cursed town of St. Martinville, and the once famous but forgotten story of Willie Francis.