Willie Francis

Willie Francis was an American best known for surviving a failed execution by electrocution in the United States. He was a juvenile offender sentenced to death at age 16 by the state of Louisiana in 1945 for the murder of Andrew Thomas, a Cajun pharmacy owner in St. Martinville who had once employed him. He was 17 when he survived the first attempt to execute him, as the chair malfunctioned. After an appeal of his case taken to the US Supreme Court failed, he was executed in 1947 at age 18.