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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

Robert Williams More News

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/

John Smith Georgia Execution

John Smith was executed by the State of Georgia for a double murder committed during a robbery. According to court documents John Smith and two accomplices would lure the victim to a remote part of Georgia. The victim would show up with his new wife and they both would be shot and killed. John Smith would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death. John Smith would be executed by way of the electric chair on December 15, 1983

John Smith More News

John Eldon Smith, a 53-year-old insurance salesman convicted of a double murder, went to his death on this brilliantly blue morning after nine years of appeals. He was the second man to be executed this week.

Mr. Smith made no final statement of his own and refused to select the witnesses for his electrocution. His face betrayed no emotion as he walked to the death chamber, and he complained only that the straps of the chair were being pulled too much as guards fastened them. ”Hey, there ain’t no point in pulling so tight,” he said.

The swiftness of the procedure, which one witness described as ”antiseptic and sterile,” emphasized the quickening pace of executions in the United States. Mr. Smith was the 11th man to be executed since the United States Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976, the fifth to die this year and the second in two days.

”We have crossed a threshold,” said Henry Schwarzschild, director of the capital punishment project of the American Civil Liberties Union in New York. Entering a New Period

”Before the mid-70’s, there were one or two executions a year,” he said. ”We have entered a new period where executions are utterly likely. They will be resumed in some substantial number not because, once having smelled blood, society is bloodthirsty, but for technical reasons because of the way the legal system operates.”

Mr. Schwarzschild said he did not foresee any more executions this year but estimated 30 to 50 inmates would be put to death in 1984 after exhausting their appeals.

Witnesses to the execution said that before his execution, Mr. Smith asked the Rev. Robert Wise to read his final statement. The Roman Catholic priest recited from II Corinthians: ”Indeed we know when the earthly tent in which we dwell is destroyed, we have a dwelling prepared by God.”

He concluded, ”Father, I abandon myself in your hands.”

Mr. Smith uttered only a few words. He said, ”thank you, Father,” to the priest and made the remark to the guards who were strapping him in.

The prison where Mr. Smith died is beside an expressway leading to Atlanta, and seems less remote than the backwoods Louisiana State Penitentiary where Robert Wayne Williams was put to death before dawn Wednesday. But ultimately their lives were extinguished in the same way. The Sentence Carried Out

A square of material was draped over Mr. Smith’s face and a leatherstrapped cap containing an electrode was placed over his head.

So tightly was he strapped to the chair, witnesses said, it was difficult to tell when the three unidentified executioners pressed three small buttons, one of which sent 2,000 volts of electricity through the condemned man’s body for two minutes. According to prison tradition, none of the executioners knew if his was the lethal button. Mr. Smith’s body tensed as if he had taken a deep breath; his right hand curled upward, the thumb touching the index finger. The hair on his arms and legs curled.

The body remained in the chair for six minutes before the prison warden, Ralph Kemp, along with two physicians and the guards, all with name tags removed, entered to examine the corpse and pronounce the man dead.

Outside the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Center, protestors who had been videotaped by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation sang ”Swing Low, Sweet Chariot.”

Mr. Smith drew the death sentence after he was convicted of shooting his wife’s former husband, Ronald Akins, and Mr. Akins’ new wife, Juanita, on Aug. 31, 1974 in a plot to collect $20,000 in insurance money. The plot was said to have been concocted by Mr. Smith’s wife, Rebecca Machetti, and carried out by Mr. Smith and another man, John Maree, both of whom are serving life sentences.

According to court testimony, Mr. Smith hoped to impress the Mafia with his prowess as a hit man

https://www.nytimes.com/1983/12/16/us/georgia-man-becomes-second-executed-in-26-days.html

Frank Coppola Virginia Execution

Frank Coppola was executed by the State of Virginia for the murder of a woman committed during a robbery. According to court documents Frank Coppola, who was a police officer, would murder a woman during a robbery. The woman would be beaten to death. Frank Coppola would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death. Frank Coppola would be executed by way of the electric chair which did not go well as his head and leg would catch on fire however he would be pronounced dead on August 11, 1982

Frank Coppola More News

Convicted murderer Frank Coppola, a former policeman who preferred death to Death Row, went calmly to his execution Tuesday night in Virginia’s electric chair saying, ‘take care of my family, my children.’

Coppola, who maintained his innocence but said he wanted to be executed to spare his family further embarrassment, died at 11:27 p.m. EDT, state corrections director Ray Procunier said.

Coppola became the fifth convict executed in the United States since 1976 when the Supreme Court lifted the ban on capital punishment and the first to die in Virginia’s electric chair in 20 years.

The U.S. Supreme Court, in a 5-2 ruling announced 30 minutes before Coppola’s scheduled 11 p.m. EDT execution, cleared the way for Coppola, 38, to die as he requested in a letter he sent Tuesday to Chief Justice Warren Burger. The high court’s ruling overturned a mid-afternoon stay by a federal appeals court judge.

‘I, Frank J. Coppola, do hereby … seek relief through the U.S. Supreme Court so as to bring about my execution this date,’ Coppola said in the letter.

Through the evening, about 40 curiousity seekers and some people who said they came to pray for Coppola’s soul stood against a wall across from the state Penitentiary.

On a hot, muggy night, many of the onlookers simply stood and talked quietly among themselves.

‘I just came out because it’s something I feel strongly about,’ said James Fralin, 34, a construction worker. ‘This sign says all you can say about it,’ he continued, pointing to a hand-lettered placard bearing the words ‘Thou Shalt Not Kill. There are no exceptions.’

Procunier, who witnessed the execution, said, ‘Pursuant to an order by the Circuit Court of Newport News, Frank J. Coppola was executed at 11:27 p.m. in the manner prescribed by law. Out of respect for the deceased’s family, I will make no further comment on the procedure.’

Procunier was asked if Coppola had any final words and what he had for his last meal, but the corrections chief did not comment.

ABC’s ‘Nightline’ reported that Joe Engle, of the Southern Coalition on Jails and Prisons, walked With Coppola to the death ward. The prison activist told ABC that Coppola was calm, saying to him, ‘I love you. Please take care of my family, my children.’

Coppola was convicted of beating a Newport News woman to death in 1978 during a robbery in an attempt to make her tell where money was hidden in her home.

Gov. Charles Robb said, ‘The decision not to interfere with the order of the circuit court of Newport News was the most difficult and emotionally draining decision I have had to make as governor of Virginia.

‘While I respect the beliefs and convictions of those who oppose capital punishment under any and all circumstances, the law of the Commonwealth provides for that penalty under certain, very limited circumstances, and I support the law.’

High-intensity lights from television cameras cast eerie shadows on the white-walled Penitentiary building about 2 miles from the State Capitol.

Warden James Mitchell read the execution order to Coppola, whose head was shaved a shaved head and who wore a Fu Manchu moustache, and then escorted him to the death chamber 30 paces from his cell.

Mitchell inserted a key in a slot in the death chamber, which opened the current and at the same time activated a signal to the executioner to push a button, sending two 55-second bursts of 2,400 volts through Coppola’s body.

At about 11:50 p.m., a single-siren wail pierced the air at the Penitentiary. It was an ambulance taking Coppola’s body to the state medical examiner’s office, said corrections spokesman Gil Miller.

https://www.upi.com/Archives/1982/08/11/Convicted-murderer-Frank-Coppola-a-former-policeman-who-preferred/5929397886400/

Charlie Brooks Texas Execution

Charlie Brooks was executed by the State of Texas for kidnapping, robbery and murder. According to court documents Charlie Brooks would test drive a vehicle at a car lot, the employee who went with him on the ride would be kidnapped, brought to a hotel where he was shot and killed. Charlie Brooks would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death. Charlie Brooks would be the first inmate who would be executed by lethal injection on December 7, 1982

Charlie Brooks More News

When Charles Brooks Jr. lay down on a gurney in the execution chamber, there was no way to know exactly what would happen next.

On this day in 1982, Brooks was the first person to be executed by injecting a cocktail of drugs intended to numb his body and mind, paralyze him and stop his heart. His death, the first by lethal injection, sparked an ethics debate among the public and physicians about whether the procedure is humane, one that continues today

Charlie Brooks was convicted of murdering David Gregory, an auto mechanic, wrote Dick Reavis for Texas Monthly in early 1983. Gregory rode with Brooks during a test drive at the used-car lot where he worked. That night, he was found tied up in a motel room. He had been shot in the head. In separate trials, both Brooks and partner in crime Woodie Loudres were sentenced to die for the crime. Loudres was able to reduce his sentence, but Brooks was not, although no weapon was ever found and officials never determined who shot Gregory.

Lethal injection was seen to be more humane than other execution methods, like gas, electrocution or hanging, according to an article on History.com. Because one of the drugs used was supposed to put the condemned in a state of deep sedation, it was also perceived to be painless. In spite of physician protests that lethal injection was a violation of medical ethics, wrote Robert Reinhold of The New York Times, it was seen as acceptable. But conflicting witness reports at Brooks’s death led Reinhold to report that “the procedure did not seem to settle the question of whether such a death was painless.”

The conviction that landed Charlie Brooks on death row wasn’t his first. What was different this time: he knew that if the state didn’t intervene in his case, he could become the first man on death row to be killed by a cocktail of drugs designed to numb his mind and stop his heart. “In his best mood,” Reavis wrote: “Charlie thought that there was nothing to fear in death by injection. He believed that he could set it up to be like the surgery after the first of his bullet woundings.”

Brooks and Reavis made an agreement: if the condemned man felt pain during his execution, he would shake his head, like he was saying “no,” and Reavis would understand. They repeated the agreement at each meeting

In the end, the state didn’t grant Charlie Brooks a stay of execution. “For the first time in American penal history,” Reavis wrote, “men who were neither physicians nor sorcerers got ready to execute a prisoner with the forbidden tools of medicine and pharmacology,”

“According to four reporters who witnessed the execution in a tiny room at the edge of the prison’s Walls unit, Mr. Brooks appeared to have suffered some pain,” Reinhold wrote.

Today, those killed by lethal injection are almost as likely to be guinea pigs for the procedure as Brooks was. Supplies of known lethal-injection cocktails are running out across the United States, reports Tess Owen for Vice. Injections nationwide are at a 25-year low, she writes, partially because it’s increasingly hard for corrections departments to get the drugs they need to perform them. This deficit has led to correctional departments trying untested mixes of drugs to replace the old standards they aren’t able to get anymore, with grim results. Only Texas, Georgia and Missouri are using the death penalty “with any regularity,” writes Mike Brantley for AL.com. But the death penalty remains legal, and those who face the prospect of death at state hands may potentially be killed using untried cocktails of drugs.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/thirty-four-years-ago-first-person-died-lethal-injection-it-was-controversial-then-too-180961343/

Steven Judy Indiana Execution

Steven Judy was executed by the State of Indiana for the murders of a mother and her children. According to court documents Steven Judy would murder Terry Lee Chasteen and her three children, Misty Ann, Steve and Mark, on April 28, 1979. Steven Judy would confess to his foster mother while he was on Indiana death row that he was responsible for a number of other murders of women across the USA. Steven Judy would be executed by electric chair on March 9, 1981.

Steven Judy More News

Terry Lee Chasteen started her work day April 28, 1979, with her normal routine of taking her three young children to their baby sitter’s house. Along the way, Chasteen had car trouble. The single mom pulled to the side of the road and readily accepted help from a man who she thought was simply being a Good Samaritan.

Steven Judy was anything but a Good Samaritan.

After fixing her tire but disabling her car, Judy offered Chasteen and her children a ride.

Within an hour, Terry and her children were dead. Judy savagely raped and strangled Chasteen and threw her three children into White Lick Creek near Mooresville. The children — Misty Ann, 5; Steve, 4; and Mark, 2 — drowned.

Judy was tried in Martinsville in January 1980 and initially maintained his innocence. He later confessed and was sentenced to the electric chair.

Steven T. Judy was executed March 9, 1981. He ordered prime rib and lobster for his last meal. His final words before execution were, “I don’t hold no grudges. This is my doing. Sorry it happened.”

State death penalty laws were overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1972. Many states, including Indiana, passed new laws that met the criteria outlined by the high court. Indiana’s death penalty was reinstated in 1977, and Judy was the first to go to the electric chair after that.

https://www.indystar.com/story/news/history/retroindy/2015/03/09/steven-judy-4-killed-in-chilling-case/24654597/