Man who survived the electric chair described the terrifying sensation of it
A man who survived a failed execution by electrocution once recounted how harrowing the sensation was.
In 1945, an American teenager called Willie Francis was arrested and later sentenced to death by the state of Louisiana for the murder of Andrew Thomas.
The death of the pharmacy owner in St. Martinville had stumped officials for nine months before his ex-employee, Francis, 15, was arrested.
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Police initially detained the teen on suspicion of drug trafficking but later claimed they’d found Thomas’ wallet in his pocket.
Evidence of this claim was never submitted to court and despite Francis offering up several others in connection to the crime, officers sustained their guilty notion.
Francis later confessed to the murder of Thomas on two separate occasions, but maintained his innocence during the trial and pled not guilty in court.
Despite his denial, Francis was found guilty of the crime and was sentenced to death on 3 May, 1946, despite being underage.
However, the teenager’s death by electric chair didn’t exactly go to plan.
It’s said that before Francis’ execution, an intoxicated prison guard and inmate from the Louisiana State Penitentiary incorrectly set up a portable electric chair.
The result of the blunder saw the young boy being given an intense electric shock.
After officials tried to execute him the first time, Francis reportedly said he could only describe the sensation of being electrocuted as ‘Whamm! Zst!’
“It felt like a hundred and a thousand needles and pins were pricking in me all over and my left leg felt like somebody was cutting it with a razor blade,” he explained.
"I could feel my arms jumping at my sides … I thought for a minute I was going to knock the chair over … I think I must have hollered for them to stop.
"They say I said, 'Take it off! Take it off!' I know that was certainly what I wanted them to do - turn it off."
Following the botched execution, Francis’ case was brought back to court by attorney Bertrand DeBlanc.
He apparently thought it was ‘cruel’ to subject his client to another execution process and wanted to clear his name.
However, despite his attempt the US Supreme Court rejected DeBlanc’s appeal and Francis returned to the electric chair a year later.
This time, the execution device was set up correctly and 18-year-old Francis went to ‘meet the Lord with his Sunday pants and Sunday heart’.
Following the Louisiana native’s death, his story has lived on and historians have branded him as ‘the teenager who was executed twice’.
As well as his story, the words he described the feeling of being seconds away from death have lived on.
Ella Scott