Entries tagged with “Willie Francis”
Federal Death Penalty
,Methods of Execution
,Botched Executions
,May 05, 2026
New Analysis: In Seeking Firing Squad, Electrocution, and Nitrogen Gas Executions, DOJ Misrepresents American History and Law
On April 24, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) released a report proposing an expansion of the federal death penalty, including adding firing squad, electrocution, and lethal gas as execution methods. The DOJ characterizes the Biden Administration’s moratorium on executions as “an unprecedented break from the [DOJ]’s longstanding approach to the death penalty,” while casting this new effort as a return to form. The DOJ further claims that the three alternative methods of execution have a…
Executions
Botched Executions
,Nov 29, 2021
Alabama Death-Row Prisoner Doyle Hamm, Who Survived Botched Execution Attempt, Dies of Cancer
Alabama death-row prisoner Doyle Lee Hamm (pictured), whose botched execution attempt was called off in 2018 after 2½ hours of unsuccessful attempts to set an intravenous execution line, has died on death row. He was 64 years old. Hamm had been suffering from terminal cranial and lymphatic cancer since 2014, which contributed to his death on November 27, 2021, his lawyer, Columbia University Law School Professor Bernard Harcourt, said. Harcourt told Birmingham investigative reporter Beth…
Research
Executions Overview
,Methods of Execution
,Feb 21, 2008
BOOKS: “The Execution of Willie Francis”
Author Gilbert King, in his forthcoming book The Execution of Willie Francis, details the story of a young African-American man who endured the electric chair twice before being executed for the murder of a white man in Louisiana. In 1946, an all-white jury convicted Francis, who was 17, and sentenced him to death. The first attempt to execute him by electrocution did not work, and Francis was returned to his death row cell where he remained for almost another year while the U.S. Supreme Court…