Book Report On A Lesson Before Dying

A Lesson Before Dying

A Lesson Before Dying is a novel based on the real life event of the Willie Francis execution. Grant Wiggins was teaching on a plantation outside of Bayonne, Louisiana, for several years. A man named Jefferson was convicted of murder and was sentenced to death. Jefferson claims he was not guilty of the crime. He was on the way to a bar one night and he got side tracked and changed his mind and decided to go to the liquor store with these two men. When they got to the store an argument between the two men and the storeowner which ended up in a shootout that resulted in the storeowners death. To know more about the novel “A lesson Before Dying“you need to know more about the original story of the Willie Francis case.

Willie

Attorney Bertrand DeBlane was a deeply religious white man, agreed to take on the Willie Francis case. During the next year and a half he shared legal work with the NAACP. The more he heard about the case the more out ragged he was about the situation. The case would bounce back from court to court till eventually it ended up at the U.S Supreme Court in Washington D.C. They ended up working to the conclusion that a person cannot be tried twice for the same offence. DeBlane, Wright and the NAACP pushed forward arguing that the Bill Of Rights shall apply to the streets. When it was time for the execution Francis told the executers he wasn’t going to die, when they put the helmet down own him he said out loud to please take it off because he was unable to breathe, As soon as he said that a man from the crowd of spectators yelled “you’re not supposed to”. After that they proceeded with his execution, but when he was still alive after they lifted the helmet he said, “God fooled with the chair “. After they strapped him back up the second time and sent the current he died. Willie Francis became the twenty-fourth state resident killed by “Gruesome Gertie