The Wilmington morning star., 1946-07-10
Fair Enough
By PEGLER
Copyright, BY King Features Syndicate, Inc.)

VA04DnOOh 0AG
Copyright, By King Features Syndicate, Inc.)
NEW YORK, - On May 3, a 17-year-o1d
Negro boy named Willie Francis was led to
the electric chair IN New Iberia, La. to be
put to death for murder. He was strapped in,
and the switch was thrown and nothing hap
pened. A wire had come loose and it is doubt
tul that ary current at all passed through him,
although he says he felt the heat of the at
tachments on mis- head and others who were
present observed some " the familiar reac-
tons of human beings in the chair, such as
CONFUSION and putting of the lips.
Willie Francis has been reprieved until the
Supreme Court of the United States can pass
upon an appeal claiming double jeopardy on
the ground that the state had its chance to
Kill him and bungled a grisly job.
A layraan may ignore the niceties Of law
here and plead that Louisiana stop this torture
at once BY committing the boys sentence to
life Imprisonment. The real punishment of the
death penalty under our system lies in the
hours, weeks and months Of waiting the per-
sistence OF desperate hope until the last in
slant, the visits of helpless, anguisned rela-
tives and the kindness Ct attendants, includ-
ing the unhappy chaplalns, who would grant
the prisoner life i they only could and yet,
in the end, must take his life as certainly as
though they bore him a personal grudge.
No way has yet been devised of killing a
human being by order of the court and &C.
cording to law which, in the end, relieves this
stately official act Of the brutality of long
premeditated murder. Hitler, in his early days,
and with his insane concept of dignity ap-
pointed a headsman in formal evening dress
who Topped off heads With an axe. In some of
our Western states we have tried the firing
squad and the lethal gas chamber but, though
these methods may be less painful in the final
instant than hanging, beheading and the cleo
trio shock, the torture Of contemplating re-
mains and Willie Francis has gone through
all that end the final act as well, in which he
played his part fully, according to the law, and
lived to tell of it only because the state fell
down.
l was in the prison yard at Carson, New,
a lew years ago and unwittingly found my
self IN the death house, which 1 took to be a
refrigerator. Around the yard, in the shade of
the high wall, idle men were rotting with
nothing to do. A few were working in a shop
making license plates Cor automobiles. a few
were playing catch and a few were making
hat ornaments out of horse hair.
AS we entered the desth house / saw a man
in Stacks and a white shirt pacing his cell
and swatting flies. I srinned amiably, still not
knowing what this place was, and with a look
that l cannot describe he turned his back.
The principal keeper then led me into the gas
chamber a few feet away and, in a voice
clearly audible to the NAL in the cell, ex-
planned how it worked and how the stetho-
scope running out through the double window,
to the ears of the official doctor, would tell
when the man was dead. He heard it all and
he gave us his back as we went out. What
would you have said. 10 him? Good luck" or
glad to have seen you?"
He was a very game man, a gambler who
had killed his wife and refused to apply for
Communication because that would mean life in
the same idle uselessness that he could see
about him through the open door. The gov
ernor. when I saw him later in the day. SEEM
ed relieved for if the gambler persisted in his
determination, that meant that he would not
have to pass on an appeal for clemency.
In Arizona, two years back, there was an
execution in the chamber of the prison at
Florence and the stories II the papers told us
that the father of the young man, a poor
Mexican or Latin-American. from the desert
country. waited outside the death house with
a blackboard and blankets to carry the body
back home for burial. Their he drove off with
his boy dead in the blackboard.
We kill and we turn over the bodies Of the
dead to their families and the anguish is in
flicted not only on the guilty, themselves, who
may have killed in panic on the infant, but
on their mothers and sisters.
OF course, capital punishment has been de-
bated endlessly and our laws ~inflicting the
death penalty express Our pathetic inability
to work out any other deterrent thus far, not
that the death penalty does deter, as our homi-
eide rate shows. Usually. ashamed of all this.
we hold these ceremonies in privacy, although
in Some primitive communities, where formal
executions are rare occasions. the public
comes trouping to picnics and children have
been held up by their mothers above the heads
of the crowds to see the mar go through the
floor. The rest of us regard these as brutal
and degrading scenes.
Capital punishment is the law of Louisiana
but surely Louisiana is big enough to take
responsibility for the failure to kill Willie Fran.
els on the first attempt and white civiliza-
ton and law and order can waive the con-
tinuing torture here inflicted on a boy of II,
who, through no fault of his own, is waiting
now to die again.
What has Louisiana got to lose. anyway?