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The Execution of Willie Francis: Race, Murder, and the Search for Justice in the American South
Gilbert King
Basic Civitas Books
April 2008
On Sale: April 14, 2008
362 pages
ISBN: 046500265X
EAN: 9780465002658
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction History
The inspiration behind A Lesson Before Dying meets the best
of John Grisham, as a young Cajun lawyer fights to save a
black teenager from the electric chair.
On May 3, 1946, a seventeen-year-old boy was scheduled to
die by the electric chair inside of a tiny red brick jail
in picturesque St. Martinville, Louisiana. Young Willie
Francis had been charged with the murder of a local
pharmacist. The electric chair--three hundred pounds of oak
and metal-- had been dubbed "Gruesome Gertie" and was moved
from one jailhouse to another throughout the state of
Louisiana. The switch would be thrown at 12:08 P.M., but
Willie Francis did not die. Miraculously, having survived
this less than cordial encounter with death, Willie was
soon informed that the state would try to kill him again in
six days. Letters began pouring into St. Martinville from across the
country--Americans of all colors and classes were
transfixed by the fate of this young man. Had he been saved
from death from the hand of the Almighty? Could Louisiana
really execute someone twice? Was the boy innocent--the
victim of secrets and lies told by powerful whites in the
cursed town of St. Martinville? Into the fray stepped a
Cajun lawyer just returned from WWII, Bertrand DeBlanc, who
would take on Willie's case--in the face of overwhelming
local resistance. DeBlanc would argue the case all the way
from the Bayou to the U.S. Supreme Court in an attempt to
save one boy's life and the conscience of a nation. In deciding Willie's fate the courts and the country would
be forced to ask questions about capital punishment that
remain unresolved today.
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