Robert Wayne Williams -- a photo of whose badly burned head is shown here -- was executed in the electric chair at the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola in 1983. Publication of this and other post-execution pictures of William's body last year int The Angolite, Louisiana's award-winning inmate-run magazine, has helped stop the use of electrocution as Louisiana's method of execution. A new law mandates that, as of September 15, capital punishment in the state will be administered by lethal injection.

Williams was the first inmate from Louisiana's death row executed after a twenty-two year hiatus. Angolite co-editor Ron Wikberg, in a nineteen-page history of the electric chair in the September/October 1990 issue, compared the photographs of Williams with those of nine inmates executed by electric chair in Florida, which temporarily suspended electrocutions after the botched execution of Jesse Tafero on May 4, 1990. "A comparison of the photographs . . . shows an unmistakable similarity in the degree of mutilation," Wikberg wrote.

Medical experts who viewed the photos at the request of The Angolite identified first, second, third, and fourth degree burns on Williams's body. "Execution by electrocution is extremely painful," Dr. Harold Hillman, a British expert on execution, told The Angolite, not only because of burning, but because body fluids "must have heated up to a temperature close to the boiling point of water in order to generate the steam" that witnesses often see. He also asserted that "there is no scientific evidence whatsoever to support the notion that a person being electrocuted loses consciousness."

The photographs, taken by Williams's family, were discovered last year by attorneys for the Loyola Death Penalty Resource Center. After the publication of the photographs and after the passage of the new law, the Louisiana Pardon Board recommended a postponement of execution for convicted murderer Andrew Lee Jones, in order to delay the execution until after the September 15 deadline. Governor Buddy Roemer, however, rejected the delay, saying that Jones "deserves what he is about to get." A Baton Rouge television reporter who witnessed Jones's July 23 execution reported smoke coming from the temple electrode. (As CJR went to press, two more electric chair executions were tentatively scheduled for August.)

Some observers credit the passage of the law outlawing electrocution to the backing of prosecuting attorneys, who wanted a less objectionable form of execution in order to win more death-penalty verdicts from juries. But the editors of The Angolite -- Wikberg and Wilbert Rideau -- also get credit. By focusing attention on the electric chair issue, says Burk foster, a professor of criminology at the University of Southwestern Louisiana, who has co-authored a textbook on the Louisiana correctional system with the two prison editors, they made it "more and more difficult to sell electrocution to Louisiana juries"

Twelve states, meanwhile, still use the electric chair. These include Georgia, Florida, Virginia, and Alabama -- four of the six states that perform the most executions (Louisiana and Texas are the others). Eight hundred and eight-two death-row prisoners now face electrocution.

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