louisiana death row | My Crime Library

Ernest Knighton Louisiana Execution

Ernest Knighton was executed by the State of Louisiana for a murder committed during a robbery. According to court documents Ernest Knighton would cause the death of a gas station manager during a robbery. Ernest Knighton would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death. Ernest Knighton would be executed by way of the electric chair on October 30, 1984

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Convicted killers were executed within seven minutes of each other in Texas and Louisiana early today, one reciting the 23rd Psalm on his way to the electric chair for killing a gas station owner and the other saying goodbye to his death row friends.

‘I’m going home,’ Earnest Knighton, 38, said moments before he was electrocuted at 12:17 a.m. CST in ‘Gruesome Gertie,’ the inmates’ name for the electric chair at the state prison in Angola, La.

Seven minutes later and 235 miles away in Huntsville, Texas, Thomas Andy Barefoot, 39, an oilfield roughneck who said God had promised to spare him, was pronounced dead from a lethal injection.

‘I’m sorry for everything I’ve done to anybody,’ Barefoot said.

After being injected Barefoot turned to a reporter who witnessed the execution and asked her to say farewell to his friends on death row.

‘… tell all my friends hello,’ he said. ‘You know who they are. Charlie Bass, David Powell …’

At that point Barefoot broke off with a choke and a gasp and he let out three short, sharp, soft cries and died.

Knighton and Barefoot became the 27th and 28th people executed since the Supreme Court lifted the ban on the death penalty eight years ago. Attorneys for a woman on North Carolina’s death row filed appeals Monday to prevent her from becoming the first woman executed in 22 years on Friday.

The Supreme Court and other courts rejected last-minute appeals Monday from both Barefoot and Knighton and the governors of Louisiana and Texas refused to intervene.

Knighton’s lawyers claimed he was drug-crazed when he killed Ralph Shell of Bossier City, La., during a March 17, 1981, robbery that netted $300.

Barefoot, convicted in the 1978 shooting death of Carl LeVin, a Harker Heights, Texas, police officer, had received four stays of execution. His attorneys argued psychiatric testimony used in the punishment phase was obtained illegally and important information was suppressed.

As he was led down the long corridor to the death chamber, Knighton recited the 23rd Psalm, raising his voice as he crossed the threshold, saying, ‘Surely I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.’

In a written statement, he apologized for his crime but spoke out against his punishment, saying, ‘You don’t teach respect for life by killing. I urge you not to kill anyone else.’

Barefoot asked for forgiveness and said he held no grudges.

‘I’ve been praying all day for Carl LeVin’s wife to drive the bitterness from her heart because that bitterness in her heart will send her to hell,’ Barefoot said as he was strapped to a table prior to injection

‘I want everybody to know I hold nothing against them. I forgive them all. I hope everybody I’ve done anything wrong to will forgive me.’

Small groups of protesters gathered outside both prisons.

A crowd of mostly students from nearby Sam Houston State University cheered and waved placards ridiculing Barefoot outside the prison in Huntsville. One woman carried a 4-foot-long mock syringe.

About 30 people protesting the death penalty met outside Angola State Penitentiary. The were met by a handful of demonstrators in favor of the death penalty. Both stood quietly facing each other across the road into the prison.

In North Carolina, attorneys for Margie Velma Barfield filed an emergency appeal with the Supreme Court to stop her Friday execution.

The 52-year-old grandmother admitted poisoning her mother and three others, but has said she was addicted to drugs and did not know what she was doing.

https://www.upi.com/Archives/1984/10/30/Killers-executed-in-Louisiana-and-Texas/5829467960400/

Robert Willie Louisiana Execution

Robert Willie was executed by the State of Louisiana for the sexual assault and murder of a woman. According to court documents Robert Willie and Joseph Vaccaro would kidnap eighteen year old Faith Hathaway who would be sexually assaulted and killed. Three days later the two men would attack a young couple, sexually assault the female and shot the male. The male would survive his injuries however he would be paralyzed. Robert Willie and Joseph Vaccaro would be arrested, Robert Willie would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death. The book and movie Dead Man Walking is based on the relationship between Robert Willie and Sister Helen Prejean.

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Robert Lee Willie, who raped and killed an 18-year-old Mandevile woman, was executed Friday morning after telling the victim’s parents, “I hope you get some relief from my death.”

Willie, 26, who was pronounced dead at 12:15 a.m., became the sixth Louisiana man executed in the past 13 months, and the 32nd nationwide since executions resumed in 1977.

Vern and Elizabeth Harvey, the stepfather and mother of murder victim Faith Hathaway, were among eight people witnessing the execution. The Harveys have been vocal supporters of the death penalty and have demonstrated in support of capital punishment at other executions.

The Harveys did not move or show emotion as Willie spoke to them.

But within a half-hour after the execution, a smiling Vern Harvey poured a drink for himself and his wife in their van parked outside the state penitentiary’s main gate.

“Do you want to dance?” he asked a reporter. “First thing I’m gonna do is have a drink, then go home and get some rest.”

Willie, who had said earlier that he was not afraid of the electric chair, was led into the death chamber just after midnight. He was wearing jeans, a white sweatshirt, and white slippers; and was escorted by six guards.

“I would just like to say Mr. and Mrs. Harvey that I hope you get some relief from my death,” he said. “Killing people is wrong. That’s why you’ve put me to death. It makes no difference whether it’s citizens, countries, or governments. Killing is wrong.”

He was strapped into the chair and a hood was placed over his head.

Then, he asked Angola State Penitentiary Warden Frank Blackburn to remove the hood, and he winked at Sister Helen Prejean of New Orleans, his spiritual advisor.

Prejean was praying, and said, “Forgive those who collaborate.”

At 12:07, Willie was jolted by 2,000 volts of electricity for 10 seconds, and then 500 volts for 20 seconds. The sequence was repeated.

West Feliciana Parish Coroner Alfred Gould examined Willie at 12:13 and pronounced him dead at 12:15.

On his last day, Willie visited with his mother, Elizabeth Oalman of Covington, four brothers, and Prejean.

Blackburn said that Willie was served the last meal he requested — fried fish, oysters and shrimp — as well as some french fries and a salad.

Blackburn said Willie’s mood before the execution was “quiet and somber … appropriate to the occasion. He doesn’t seem scared, but he’s not lighthearted.”

Outside the prison, Hathaway’s sister, Lizabeth, 14, demonstrated for the death penalty along with a half-dozen members of Parents of Murdered Children, a group the family founded.

Death penalty opponents did not demonstrate at Angola, as they have in the past, but staged a vigil outside the Governor’s Mansion in Baton Rouge. As they prayed, tourists took photos of the governor’s 40-foot Christmas tree.

Before the execution, Vern Harvey said he regretted that Willie would not feel much pain from the electrocution.

“It’s going to be quick for him. I’d rather it would be a lot slower. I think he deserves the painful death she had.”

Willie sometimes said he’s sorry for his crimes, but couldn’t understand “why everybody keeps bringing it up.” He said Harvey shouldn’t dwell on the murder.

“It’s like he’s a glutton for punishment over her death,” Willie said.

In interviews last week, Willie recounted his life of drugs, booze, and violence in remorseless terms, and said he was not afraid to die.

“Electric chair don’t worry me, man,” he said. “I have a lot of pride, I don’t run from nothing.”

Willie said he and a friend, Joseph Jesse Vaccaro, were “loaded” at 4:30 a.m. May 28, 1980, when they say Hathaway walking alongside Mandevile road. Hathaway was returning from a celebration on the night before she was scheduled to enter the Army.

Willie and Vaccaro blindfolded her, raped her, and drove her to a remote section of Washington Parish.

“She just kept saying, ‘I won’t identify y’all or nothing,'” Willie said. “She kept saying ‘Don’t hurt me.'”

Willie and Vaccaro offer different accounts of the stabbing that ensued, blaming each other for the 17 knife wounds that took Hathaway’s life.

Willie said Vaccaro, unexpectedly began stabbing Hathaway and that he helped by holding her hands. But Vaccaro, who was sentenced to life imprisonment for his role in the murder, said at trial that “Willie jugged her and jugged her until she begged us to kill her.”

Eight days later, Willie and Vaccaro kidnapped a Madisonville couple from a wooded lovers’ lane and drove them to Alabama. They raped the 16-year-old girl, and then stabbed and shot her boyfriend, 20-year-old Mark Brewster, leaving him tied to a tree.

Brewster survived, but is paralyzed from the waist down, At trial, Willie mocked the victims by blowing kisses at the woman he raped and drawing his finger across his throat in a menacing fashion when Brewster took the stand.

After his conviction for Hathaway’s murder, Willie pleaded guilty to the 1978 killing of Dennis Hemby near Covington. Willie said he and his cousin, Perry Wayne Taylor, beat and drowned Hemby and stole $10,000 worth of marijuana from him.

Taylor plead guilty to manslaughter and is serving a 21-year-sentence.

Willie was also given six life sentences stemming from those crimes.

John Willie, 53, the condemned man’s father, served 27 years at Angola for cattle theft, aggravated battery, and manslaughter. He said that his son and Vaccaro both deserve to die.

“I believe more in capital punishment than those people on the juries,” he said. “I’d like to pull the switch myself or shoot them down.”

Wiring of chair account retracted

The father of convicted murderer Robert Lee Willie said Thursday he did not wire the electric chair at the state penitentiary at Angola in which his son was to be executed early Friday.

John Willie retracted an earlier account in which he claimed to have wired the chair when he was an inmate electrician in 1982. That claim was published in an article Thursday in The Times-Picayune/The States Item.

Angola Warden Frank Blackburn said Thursday the chair was wired before 1982 and that Willie was not an electrician and did no work on it. An inmate would not have been used for the job, Blackburn said.

Willie, responding to Blackburn’s statement, said that while he was an inmate at the prison in 1982 he watched electricians work on the chair, but did none of the work himself.

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/angel/articles/timespicayune1228.html

Robert Williams Louisiana Execution

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Robert Williams was executed by the State of Louisiana for the murder of a guard during a robbery. According to court documents Robert Williams would rob a grocery store where he would shoot and kill a guard. Robert Williams would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death. Robert Williams would be executed by way of the electric chair on December 14, 1983

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Convicted killer Robert Wayne Williams, proclaiming he hoped his death would serve as a statement ‘that capital punishment is no good and never has been,’ was executed early Wednesday.

He was the first person to die in Louisiana’s electric chair since 1961 and the 10th person to be executed in the United States since 1977.

He was pronounced dead by Dr. Alfred Gould at 1:15 a.m. CST, 1 hour and 10 minutes after the U.S. Supreme court rejected a last-ditch appeal to halt the execution. Prison officials said the switch on the electric chair was thrown at 1:06 a.m.

‘It went peacefully. There were no problems at all,’ said Mike Martin, undersecretary of corrections.

Williams, carrying a blue handkerchief in one hand, was escorted to the chair at 12:55 a.m. and bound by eight straps, including one that held his chin. A grey hood was placed over his head.

His hands :lenched when the switch triggering the first of a rapid series of 2,000 volts was thrown. His body became rigid. The four jolts of electricity spanned 1 minute, 10 seconds.

A small flame and a wisp of smoke was visible from around the strap on his left leg.

Gould, who pronounced the last prisoner to die in the state’s electric chair 22 years ago, then removed the hood from Williams’ head, closed the convict’s eyes and placed the hood back over his head.

The Rev. J.D. Brown said Williams had written his own eulogy for a Friday night funeral in Baton Rouge.

‘I believe. I feel deeply in the heart that God has come into my life and saved me,’ Williams said minutes before he was executed.

‘I told the truth about what happened,’ Williams said. ‘If my death do happen I would like it to be a remembrance for the whole country that would be a deterrence against capital punishment and that capital punishment is no good and never has been good.’

Williams, 31, was convicted in the Jan. 5, 1979, slaying of 67-year-old security guard Willie Kelly during a robbery at a Baton Rouge grocery store.

The execution was delayed one hour on the orders of Gov. Dave Treen to enable attorneys time to file a final appeal with the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington. But Justice Byron White rejected the plea — that Williams was unaware of his right to overrule his attorney and testify in his own behalf — shortly before midnight

Two months ago, White had issued a stay in a similar last-minute appeal on the execution of convicted Texas killer James David Autry.

Robert Williams was the 10th person put to death in the United States since executions were resumed with the death of Gary Gilmore before a Utah firing squad in 1977.

He was also the second black man put to death since the U.S. Supreme Court in 1976 lifted its ban on capital punishment.

Williams pleaded for a life prison sentence instead of execution, but his request was rejected by the state Pardon Board a week before he died. An 11th-hour appeal to Treen also was rejected.

Robert Williams claimed his sawed-off shotgun went off accidentally while he was under the influence of drugs.

Earlier, Williams was turned down by U.S. District Judge Frank Polozola. Polozola’s one-sentence rejection sent the condemned man’s attorney back to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans.

But the three-judge federal appeals panel also rejected the plea, saying Williams’ contention he was never advised of his right to testify should have been presented in previous hearings.

Treen said he read all court documents in the case, and was guided by ‘wise counsel, sincere advice and prayers by :lergy.’

I do not find that the judicial system has failed or that there is any other justification for the exercise of the extraordinary clemency power given the governor,’ Treen said.

As the time drew nearer to his execution, prison officials said they believed Williams resigned himself to death.

‘He’s very quiet right now,’ Warden Ross Maggio said less than two hours before the execution.

Robert Williams, his head shaved, awaited his death in a cell less than 25 feet from ‘Gruesome Gertie,’ the 6-foot-tall chair built in 1941 and last used in 1961 to execute Jesse James Ferguson. Williams declined a last meal, Maggio said.

Williams’ family left the prison at 6 p.m. His mother, Rosella, an assistant minister at the Church of God in Baton Rouge, returned to address a small group of protesters huddled in the cold wind outside the isolated compound.

‘My heart is grieved because I know my son Robert had an unfair trial,’ she said. ‘If this had been a rich man he would not be faced with the electric chair tonight. Therefore, we can say there is no justification in capital punishment.’

About 30 protesters held a vigil on the muddy grounds until they received word Robert Williams was dead.

https://www.upi.com/Archives/1983/12/14/Convicted-killer-Robert-Wayne-Williams-proclaiming-he-hoped-his/6076440226000/

Louisiana Death Row Inmate List

The male death row is at the Louisiana State Penitentiary in West Feliciana Parish. The female death row is at Louisiana Correctional Institute for Women in St. Gabriel. Louisiana primary method of execution is lethal injection.

Louisiana Death Row Inmate List – Women

Antoinette Frank

Louisiana Death Row Inmate List – Men

The Louisiana Department Of Corrections does not maintain a death row inmate roster

Antoinette Frank Women On Death Row

Antoinette Frank is on Louisiana death row for the murders of three people including a fellow police officer. At the time of the murders Antoinette Frank was working for the New Orleans Police Department as an officer. In this article on My Crime Library we are going to take a closer look at Antoinette Frank

Antoinette Frank Beginnings

Antoinette Frank was born in Louisiana on April 30, 1971

Antoinette would apply to the New Orleans Police Department in 1993 and was caught lying in several areas of her application and would fail two psychological evaluations. However due to certain changes Frank would be allowed to reapply as the New Orleans Police Department lost a number of officers due to corruption. This time Antoinette Frank would be hired.

After she finished the Police Academy and even though she was one of the top performers in her class she was not thought of as a strong officer and many fellow officers would state she knew little about policing. Antoinette Frank would be sent for a supervisor review on a number of occasions

Antoinette Frank And Rogers Lacaze

Antoinette Frank and Rogers Lacaze met in 1994 and started to date even though she was police officer and he was a known drug dealer. The couple would soon attract the attention of the New Orleans Police Department as fellow officers saw her driving a vehicle belonging to Lacaze.

Soon Antoinette and Rogers were driving around together in her patrol car where they would pull over and rob motorists. Frank would also raise red flags when she bought ammunition for a 9mm hand gun that belonged to Rogers.

Antoinette Frank Murders

On March 5, 1995 Antoinette Frank and Rogers Lacaze would enter a Vietnamese restaurant where Frank had worked as part time security. Soon after a shooting would take place where Rogers Lacaze would shoot a police officer in the back of the head, the officer had been working security for the restaurant..

The employees of the restaurant would hide in the freezer.

Once inside the freezer Antoinette Frank began pistol whipping on of the employees demanding money. Frank would obtain the money than fatally shot the employee and would then fatally shoot another employee.

When leaving the restaurant Frank overheard the 911 call and would grab a patrol car and return to the scene where she planned to kill remaining witnesses. However one of the employees was able to escape and run to other officers arriving at the scene. Antoinette Frank and Rogers Lacaze were arrested.

Antoinette Frank Trial

Antoinette Frank would stand trial on September 1995 where she was convicted of the murders, it took the jury 22 minutes to find her guilty and she would be sentenced to death.. Antoinette Frank remains on Louisiana Death Row

Rogers Lacaze would also be convicted and sentenced to death although later his sentence would change to life in prison without parole.

Antoinette Frank Photos

Antoinette Frank Videos

Antoinette Frank More News

There is just one woman rotting away on Louisiana’s death row.

Antoinette Frank can be kindly be described as the worst of the worst

A onetime New Orleans cop, Frank, now 48, was always going to go rogue.

Oldtimers at the police academy thought so and put it in writing.

And officers in the New Orleans Police Department have always been familiar with its cultural corruption.

As long as there have been cops in the Big Easy, there has been bad cops. Very bad. Murders and drug trafficking were just part of the mix when Frank joined the force in 1993.

She was 22 at the time and got caught lying several times on her application. PD headshrinkers marked her file DO NOT HIRE.

But Frank — described by fellow cops as weak, indecisive and occasionally irrational — weaselled her way in.

NOPD was a historically poorly paid department (hence the corruption) and had a tough time keeping good officers and detectives. Plus, she was black and relations between cops and the black community have never been great.

Enter Rogers Lacaze, an 18-year-old small-time dope dealer who got a case of lead poisoning.

Frank took his statement. Then the cop and the crook began having sex.

Lacaze would ride with Frank in her police cruiser and they would have romps in alleys and behind housing projects as he pedalled crack.

On March 4, 1995, around 11 p.m., Frank and her boy toy rolled into the Kim And Vietnamese restaurant. She’d picked up a few extra bucks there working security.

“The Vus took a real liking to her,” Frank’s ex-partner later said. “I mean they were in love with this girl. They bought her presents for this, presents for that. Anything she wanted, anything she needed, they gave her.”

Fellow NOPD Officer Ronald Williams was working security at the time. He knew Frank well. Problem was, Williams knew her boyfriend as a third-rate thug.

Around midnight, Chau Vu, 24, was working the restaurant with her sister and two brothers. It was slow, time to call it a night.

Then, she noticed the key was missing. Still, she decided to pay Williams and let him go home.

When she walked into the dining room, there was Antoinette Frank.

Sensing something was wrong, she slid into the back, hid the cash in a microwave and returned to the front of the joint.

Chau didn’t trust the cop, partly because of her sleazy looking beau with his chains and gold teeth.

Williams asked Antoinette Frank about the missing key. She ignored him and went to the kitchen.

The sleazeball boyfriend Lacaze then entered and shot Williams in the back of the head with a single .9 mm slug. The boy toy terror then parked two more bullets into Williams’ paralyzed body.

Lacaze took his gun and wallet

Chau grabbed her brother and another employee and they hid in the walk-in cooler, turned out the lights and prayed.

Greedy Frank and Lacaze scoured the restaurant for the dough.

As Chau watched through the cooler’s glass windows, her heart was shattered in a million pieces as Antoinette Frank stood over her brother and sister, who were holding hands, sobbing and begging for mercy.

It mattered not a whit. Frank shot them both in the head as ice cold as can be.

The two psychos then fled the restaurant.

Her brother ran to a neighbour’s and called 911.

But within minutes, terror returned.

Officer Antoinette Frank in her uniform. Chau ran. Frank pursued her but other cops stopped the killer in blue.

Frank told her fellow officers three armed men had run out the back.

To legendary NOPD homicide detective Eddie Rantz, the whole scene stunk.

Balls of brass Frank then approached Chau who was talking to Rantz. She asked the terrified woman “if she was alright.”

Shaking, and speaking in broken English, Chau said: “Why would you ask that? You were there. You knew what happened.”

That was enough for Rantz, who said years later: “There’s no doubt in my mind she went back there to kill the rest of them.

Frank stumbled fast under the rapid fire questioning at the scene from Rantz and his partner Det. Marco Demmo.

When it became clear what went down, the veteran detective said, “I wanted to vomit.”

The low-rent Romeo and Juliet pointed the finger at each other.

Lacaze was sentenced to death.

And Frank? On Oct. 20, 1995, she was also sentenced to death via the rocket ride to oblivion that is lethal injection.

After 30 years on the job, Rantz went back to school and joined the district attorney’s office. He still thinks about Antoinette Frank.

“She is, without a doubt, the most cold-hearted person I’ve ever met,” Rantz said

https://torontosun.com/news/world/crime-hunter-antoinette-frank-worst-of-the-big-sleazy

Antoinette Frank FAQ

Antoinette Frank 2021

Antoinette Frank is on Louisiana Death Row For Women

Why Is Antoinette Frank On Death Row

Antoinette Frank was convicted of three murders including the murder of a police officer